Fear of Fire
by Chicory
Summary: After a disagreement with the Volturi, Maria has lost everything, and only knows one man who can help her get it back: former soldier/former lover — Jasper Whitlock. Details Maria’s “eventful visit” to the Cullen family home in Calgary.
1. Restitution

**Restitution**

—**New Orleans, Louisiana. 1952—**

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Dawn is rising fast behind the ornate balconied buildings of Bourbon Street, and red streaks across the sky like blood.

A sea of foamy scarlet shines in the glow, puddles of liquid fire that smell like rain and iron. Human bodies are piled up three-high on either side, a mass of drained, broken limbs. The battle has lasted from dusk until dawn, and at some point the fight shifted from a wooded area in the bayou to a full-out assault in a city full of human witnesses. It is quiet now, not because the fighting has stopped, but because my soldiers are dead. Amidst sea of scarlet are the torn remains of newborns, glimmering like strips of diamond in the morning light. These are my soldiers, the men I raised and coaxed and favored, the men I promised a better life. They would have the riches of the world. They would have all the prey they desired. They would win a war for me, and after I had whispered sweet nothings in their ears and dressed them up in finery, I would send them all to die with a sparkling smile. Whether they die now or die at the year-mark is of very little consequence to me. One less item on a very long list of strategies. One less smoke-filled day in Monterrey.

I stand above it all like a white-washed queen, perched on an overlooking rooftop, my skin slick with humidity and blood.

The skirt of my gown is torn and hangs in wet, unflattering shreds against me. My upper thigh is almost completely severed, and the constant sting of venom feels like a needles beneath the gore. This will form a scar, I think moodily, glaring out over the horizon. My only scar. After centuries and centuries of escaping even the most brutal battles unscathed, I am now officially scarred. Once I was perfect. Now I am not. And this seemingly insignificant fact upsets me more than anything else about this wretched, god-awful day.

In a new battle strategy, I had trained a quarter of my army in Repair and Compensation, and ordered them to seek fresh human blood for injured soldiers. The plan had backfired miserably. Their newborn thirst overpowered my orders, and the results were gruesome. Far too many human deaths, far too much sloppiness, and far too many soldiers lost. I didn't win the battle, I didn't win the war, and the sea of bodies below me suddenly seems a worthless, reeking waste. The army will have to be built from scratch _again_. I will have to take the time to train _new_ soldiers, develop _new_ battle strategies, and somehow defend Monterrey with nothing more than a wild pack of unruly civilian converts.

My second in command comes running up the stairs behind me, and I turn to him with a bad-tempered glare. He has a thick mane of jet-black hair and a tall, fit physique that keeps my bed warm at night and my soldiers alive during the day. I've forgotten his actual name, if I ever knew it at all, and refer to him simply as Second. After Jasper... after the dozens of others I had grown bored with and politely disposed of, I was very tired of attempting to keep track of their names and idiosyncrasies. They were all the same to me — replaceable. Like wearing out a tired old horse until it collapses, and simply selecting a fresh new one from the stable. Second is the second Second, and there will probably be a third before the year is out.

He draws back at the sight of my blood-streaked appearance, his mouth dropping open at my torn gown and the jagged laceration on my left thigh. "Maria—"

I don't want to talk about how I was injured or what I am doing alone here on the roof. I cut him off with an feline hiss. "Where is everyone?"

Second pauses for a moment, looking at me like I'm crazy. "They're gone. Didn't you see the last assault? They were caught without a retreat and—"

"Shut up," I snap, stalking around to grip him by the throat. My hands, still slick with blood, slide over his cool skin until I pierce my nails in and catch hold. He winces slightly, but his glinting red eyes look at me with a mix of disgust and arrogance. This particular Second has been a hard one to break — he has more fight in him than any of the others combined. "We had over forty newborns when we crossed the border. Are you trying to tell me that a Louisiana coven of four measly vampires wiped out my entire army?"

Second firmly removes my hand from his throat. "No. A Louisiana coven of four measly vampires and three members of the _Volturi guard_ wiped out your entire army."

"What?" I whisper. Fear coils tight in my stomach.

If the Volturi were here, if they had seen the bloody street below, they would burn me in an instant. The battle had gotten out of hand, especially in the early hours of the morning, and our fighting had definitely exposed us to human eyes. Now the sun was up and the mess still remained — a street full of glimmering white evidence and murder. This was not the first time that the Volturi had arrived to clean up after me, but it was definitely the first time they arrived this fast. I usually had at least a week to run back to Monterrey and play innocent: _"As you can see, dear sirs, I have no army. As you can see, dear sirs, I remain in Monterrey. As you can see, dear sirs, I have no intention of causing trouble."_

Second nods down to the street, where several humans are now wandering through the corpses with shell-shocked vacant expressions. A couple of them let out little cries of anguish. They would have to be killed too. Half the French Quarter would have to be killed in order to keep this quiet. Second crosses his arms over his chest. "The Volturi are here. They were informed, probably weeks ago. That invasion detection talent the Frenchies have within the coven must have—"

I hiss at him again. "I'm well aware of their talents, you simpleton."

"Well, they're here," he snaps. "What are you going to do about it?"

I press my lips together tight, and look out over the horizon. _Here_ is a very unspecific term. Were they here, as in America? Louisiana? New Orleans? If they were even a day away, I could abandon Second and the soldiers and run nonstop to the safety of Monterrey. That would at least buy me the time of a trial — my word against the Louisiana coven. I could even say that Second went rogue and planned the invasion himself. It might be hard to convince them, with a history like mine, but I am nothing if not persuasive. "Do we have time to run?"

"I should think not," Second says flatly. He raises an eyebrow at my use of the word "we," and I feel like slapping him for his impertinence. "They were following me up the stairs."

Dread sinks into my stomach. "Why didn't you say that in the first place? Don't just stand there like a corpse — go fight them off."

"While you run and leave me here to take the fall?" Second laughs humorlessly. "I don't think so, _dear_. If I burn, you burn."

A clapping noise from the stairwell makes me twist around in horror. A huge, muscular vampire dressed in the hooded black cloak of the Volturi is standing there, applauding as if this were the last act of a repugnant cabaret. Two others are behind him — young, far too young to be changed. They are not clapping, and do not look even remotely pleased to be here. Their youth is very ominous. The Volturi would never have brought two such young children into the guard unless their abilities were beyond extraordinary. The vampire in the lead, however, is _not_ extraordinary. I know this because I have had the misfortune of conversing with him several times in the past. Felix, much like certain venereal diseases, was irritatingly hard to get rid of.

"Maria," he says, flashing me perfect, dimpled smile. "We meet again."

I can barely bring myself to respond. "Felix." He says nothing in reply to my greeting, but merely tilts his ear toward Bourbon Street, where screams are now echoing back and forth like raspy gunshots. He makes a sad little tsk-tsk noise with his tongue, and turns back to me, shaking his head as if I am a naughty child about to be punished. The Volturi guard will now have to expose our kind even further, with the risk of cleaning up the grisly street in the filtering morning sunlight.

I draw my shoulders back. "I can explain, of course."

"Of course," he says, smiling indulgently. "What will it be this time, I wonder? '_As you can see, dear sirs, I am only an innocent bystander'_? _As you can see, dear sirs, I have no intention of starting a war in the middle of New Orleans_?"

I scowl at his annoyingly accurate impersonation. "Matters of war are hardly uncomplicated."

The smile on his face widens. "Indeed. But you see, our issue is this: the Louisiana coven has always been respectable and cooperative. More than cooperative, actually. Guillaume is an old acquaintance of Aro's, you know. And Rémy's invasion detection talent has been useful to us on more than one occasion. He watches Volterra for us too, you know—" he smirks "—not that anyone would _dare_. The Louisiana coven remains extremely valued by the Volturi and by our kind in general. You, however, we have no particular fondness for."

He punctuates this last sentence by wiping a smear of blood from my cheek with his thumb. I step closer to him, keenly aware of Second's furious expression, and smooth my hands down the front of the Volturi cloak. This, I can handle. Seduction, I know and know well. How many hardened soldiers have I melted over the years? How many married men have gleefully followed me to my bed and their death? I brush my lips against the line of Felix's muscular jaw, and flick out my tongue to wet the curve of his ear. "That's because I've never given you a reason."

Felix remains unmoved, but assesses me calmly, like a buyer at an auction. "Tempting," he says, in a tone that indicates anything but. "If you wish, I may allow you the option of making a... down payment of that nature until you can afford to make full restitution."

This last word sours my mood, and I step back from him instantly, the purring seduction replaced with cold, red-eyed fury. "Resti_tu_tion?"

"It is morning, as you can clearly see," Felix says, waving toward the city of screaming humans and wailing sirens. "The few humans you left standing are awake now, and as you can gather by their reaction, a river of blood and the shredded remains of over sixty newborn vampires is not a common sight on Bourbon Street. It is on the radio, it will be in the papers. Half the South will know of it before it's even eight o'clock."

"So clean it up," Second snaps arrogantly, obviously upset by the sexual overture he was just forced to witness. "Isn't that your job?"

Felix eyes him evenly, with a faint hint of amusement, as if nothing this belligerent youth said could possibly ruffle him. To the untouchable Volturi guard, a soldier barely over three years old is hardly a serious threat. Felix could kill him now, in less than a second, and send the pieces sailing over the ledge of the balcony like confetti for the macabre parade below. Instead, he merely gestures to one of the twins behind him, the girl.

She steps forward with a beatific smile on her face, the kind of smile reserved for angels and statues of the Virgin Mary. She doesn't even have to lift a finger — Second is on the ground in an instant, howling, writhing back and forth with his head in his hands, looking very much as if his insides are being ripped out through his nostrils. It only lasts for a moment, but the pain he feels is actually palpable, a heavy layer of agony that drops over the rooftop like a shroud. Fear sloshes in my stomach, and as Second blindly scrabbles at the ground, his eyes still horribly blank in the aftermath, I instinctively pull my hands closer to my chest, desperately trying not to look as though this display has unnerved me. The boy twin catches my motion and smiles at me knowingly.

"Furthermore," Felix continues in a regretful tone, "there is also the grave matter of a death within the Louisiana coven. This indiscretion is unfortunately far more serious, as it opens a door for further bloodshed and further exposure. The death of one of our own is not something our kind is willing to overlook, as you well know."

Spitefully, I hope that Rémy was the one who died. He was the reason my thigh was torn open and nearly dismembered. He was also the reason I was covered in blood, the reason I had abandoned my army for the safety of the rooftop, _and_ the reason the Volturi had shown up here like a flock of carrion birds. As far as I was concerned, that thin-lipped, velvet-wearing liar had it coming. I only wish I had been the one to claw the smug expression off his face.

"Rémy is devastated at the loss of his mate," Felix continues, and I scowl. So much for wishes.

"And?" I ask, bored.

"And he is demanding some form of compensation for your actions."

"Feel free to kill my own mate, if it will assuage his grief," I say offhandedly, gesturing loosely at Second.

Second is just now managing to stand to his feet again, and he glances up with a hateful glare at my betrayal. His long black hair has loosened from its tie, and ugly scratch marks mar his cheeks where he had clawed at his own perfect face. His hands are still shaking from the pain, and a muscle in his jaw twitches when he peels his lips back into a snarl. "You double-dealing _bitch_," he hisses, teeth bared. "I hope they burn you and dance all over your ashes."

Felix only laughs, amused by both my heartlessness and Second's reaction. "Clearly, you know nothing of love, Maria. Or you never would have suggested such a thing. This knock-kneed baby is no more your mate than I am, and I doubt his death would cause you even a momentary flicker of grief. No, the Louisiana coven would not be satisfied with the death of your... plaything. They would be insulted by the mere suggestion. Instead, the Volturi has offered to take something else from you. Something that is far more valuable and dear. Your territory."

An odd, clanging sound begins in my ears. "What?"

"You will relinquish all of Texas and Northern Mexico to the Louisiana coven. Permanently. You will have thirty days to pack your belongings and get your affairs in order. The full Volturi guard will reconvene in Monterrey at that point to escort you outside of the territory, to an area of our choosing. Antarctica, I think, would be a safe place for someone with your history. I hear the penguins are surprisingly nourishing," he says, smiling sweetly. "And if you refuse to comply with these stipulations, you will be executed."

I feel as though I've been slapped. "I must keep Monterrey."

"No," Felix says flatly. "You have taken the life of Rémy's mate, and he will now take from you the only thing you hold dear."

This sentence feels as abrupt and deadly as the chopping of a guillotine, and I hold my mouth tight against my temper, knowing Felix could grow bored with me at any moment and simply murder me here on the roof. All of Texas. All of Northern Mexico. My home, my army, my territory. All lost. And Antarctica. _Antarctica!_ I feel like running Felix through with a jagged piece of scrap metal for that needless bit of abuse. I would starve to death there; doubtless that's what he has in mind. It seems wildly unfair that I should lose everything simply because some French coven bitch was dim-witted enough to wander into a war.

"What about me?" Second demands rudely. "Where's _my_ goddamn blindfold and cigarette?

Felix smiles faintly. "Oh, I think an eternity spent with Maria is punishment enough. Likely she'll kill you anyway and spare us the trouble."

Second and I glare at each other balefully, each warmed by the heat of mutual hatred. He knows I can't murder him now, not when I need an ally at my side to connive my way out of this mess. And I know he won't kill me either — he has nothing else to live for. Even in state of disgrace, I still offer him more of a life than he'd ever have wandering on his own. However we may feel about each other, neither one of us will dare to harm the other now. He and I are both banking on the same thing: there may be a time when I can use him.

Felix chuckles at the exchange, and turns back for the stairs with a swishing of his cloak. "Now, if you will follow me back downstairs, we can discuss the details. Unless of course, you prefer to be executed immediately?"

"There is nothing to discuss," I say coldly. "I have thirty days."

"The thirty days was in given to you in the expectation of your _down payment_," Felix corrects with a wicked smile. "Consider it a gift."

Several sundry whore's-tricks and forty-seven minutes later, I find myself tromping through the fetid bayou of the Louisiana wilderness with Second at my side.

Above the rotted cypresses and a thick curtain of fog, the sky is lit with the cloudy residue of an explosion. Bourbon Street mysteriously went up in flames some twenty minutes ago, an explosion that rocketed out of Galatoire's and turned every piece of evidence to ash. A faulty electrical line — how mysteriously convenient. The newspaper editors would doubtlessly be bought, and anyone else daring enough to announce the morning's events would find themselves dead by lunchtime. And, without even a miniscule amount of fanfare or consideration, Second and I were physically thrown out of New Orleans like a pair of vagrants. While I was still in the act of buttoning my torn dress.

Second glances at me sideways. "I'm in awe of your skills in negotiation."

"No, you're jealous," I correct scathingly. "And pathetic. Next time _you_ seduce Felix, if it bothers you so much, _honey_," I sneer, tacking on a needless term of endearment.

"It doesn't bother me so much as disgust me, _sweet pea_. And little good it did us anyway," he says, kicking at the muddy water in our path. "We're still painfully territory-less and on the fringe of being sent to Siberia."

"Antarctica."

"What_ever_," he snarls. "You'd better have a plan."

I sniff disdainfully. Life, to me, is like a complicated, never-ending game of multi-level chess. There is always a plan, always a backup, always a retreat. I think twelve steps ahead, moving my pieces with boldness and precision, knowing the cost of each mistake. There is never a moment when my mind is at rest, never a moment when I go through life with blind eyes or closed ears. Life is a scheme. Life is ambition. And I'm not the kind of woman who stands aside and allows fate to have its way. "Of course I have a plan, you ignorant peon. I'll simply convince them to drop the charges."

Second raises an eyebrow. "In case you didn't notice, _sugar-lamb_, the Volturi seem to hate you."

This is unquestionably true. Especially Felix, now that he is sporting some rather unsightly scratches up and down his flawless back, and a bite mark beneath his chin. But there were ways around negative emotions. Ways I hadn't seen in decades, but remembered so well I could taste them. "So I'll make them feel a different emotion."

A memory is seeping back to me as I wander through the swamp — a memory of a tall man with golden curls and solemn eyes. A soldier who had always met me match-for-match in everything... strategy, intelligence, coldness, violence. He had been what no man since has ever managed to be: my partner. However many lovers and Seconds I may have had and used, Jasper Whitlock had been the only soldier who ever meant anything more to me than a pawn. The image of him wavers like a ghost in the fog of the bayou, like a dream that I had and lost.

Second laughs spitefully. "Make them feel differently, hmm? And how, exactly, are you going to do that?"

I smile, a catlike flashing of teeth. "I'm not."

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**A/N:** I love writing villains. They're so much more interesting than people who actually have morals. What do you think so far? Next chapter: Jasper, Alice, and life with the Cullens before Maria shows up ruin things.

For those of you new to the scene, this is a sequel of some sorts to my other story, Law of Gravity.


	2. Calgary

**Calgary**

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"You're late, you know."

Emmett informs me of this rather challengingly, and gives me a disapproving look as if he's not late himself half the time. And, judging by the way Edward rolls his eyes, I'm guessing he was late again today too. Undoubtedly Edward was the only one here on time, probably arranging the plywood and tools to their current state of perfection on the work table outside while he waited. It's easy for Edward to be punctual — he doesn't have a beautiful wife to who considers it her God-given mission to be as gorgeous and distracting as possible. There isn't a married man in the world who wouldn't understand and immediately excuse the reason behind my tardiness.

"I apologize. I was hunting with Alice."

"Ah," Edward says doubtfully. He clears his throat. "Well, you've got a little... dirt on you, there." He gestures toward my back, which is covered in leaves, pine needles, and what looks mysteriously like muddy handprints. "Rough tussle with a deer?"

Emmett snorts out a laugh.

I smile vaguely as if I don't know what they're chuckling about, but a vivid image of Alice and I in the woods comes back to me: the feel of her hands running down my chest, the way her eyes had seemed to glow in the shady light. Her whispers, her smile, her smooth white skin. Even covered in mud and leaves, rolling around with her hair all mussed and her clothing torn half off, she was still perfect, like some sort of mythical woodland sex goddess.

"Oh, good _Lord_," Edward sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Please stop. Please. I swear you and Emmett must collaborate in your spare time in order to assail me with the most inappropriate images possible."

Emmett shrugs because at least half of this statement is true, and I can't help but smirk a little either. In the beginning, I did not appreciate or welcome Edward's mind-reading ability. Despite the irony of my own intrusive talent, I am a very private person. To have my inner-most thoughts broadcasted to a stranger is unnerving to say the least. Especially when Alice is concerned. But a very small, very secret part of me is also somehow glad that Edward sees — that he knows she's mine. The quick, intense bond between the two of them has been difficult for me, especially since I can feel his utter relief at Alice's presence and her abnormal gift. Even though I know what an irreplaceable hold I have on Alice's heart, I like that Edward is able to see the distinction as well.

"So, where do we start?" I ask, well aware that he had just heard my every thought.

Edward nods toward the torn-down sunroom, where long sheets of glass lay glinting in the hot sunlight amidst a pile of rubble and broken wood. "Well, as clearly indicated, Emmett has already taken it upon himself to relieve us of the chore of demolition," he says, shaking his head as Emmett and I stoically bump fists. "We can clear that out and begin assembly on the walls today. I consulted with Alice this morning about the weather, and she seemed certain that we could get the frame in place and covered before it starts to rain. Here are Esme's final plans, if you'd like to take a look," he adds, sliding the blueprints toward me.

The house in Calgary is really too small for three couples and one moody, anti-social brother. Alice and I are currently staying in the converted attic that used to serve as Edward's bedroom, but as a wedding gift, Carlisle and Esme decided to build on an addition for us. I am flattered and touched by their inclusion, but admittedly wonder if the addition is worth it. Though the Cullens are able to stay in one place much longer than the other nomadic predators of our kind, they are still forced to move every few years. I wonder if the hassle of building is worth it.

Edward looks up at me. "It's worth it. A project like this presents each of us with something to focus on, and it also provides us with something to accomplish together as a family. Even when we do move, it's highly unlikely that we'll abandon the house. Carlisle tends to keep all of our property, especially the homes that we've put work into or loved. We can come back in another fifty years or so."

"Plus, the extra houses can serve as vacation spots for newlywed couples who seem to prefer rolling around on the ground like gophers," Emmett says innocently, hiding a smirk.

I raise an eyebrow. "Not that it's any of your business where and what we do, but I'd rather that than destroy entire homes, vehicles, or the occasional barn, as other... overly-enthusiastic couples have been known to do." I pause. "And did you just compare to me as a _gopher_?"

Edward barely looks up from the blueprints. "I'd watch out, Emmett."

Emmett only laughs. As opposed to Edward's stormy disposition, Emmett is all sunlight, smiles, and enthusiasm — with the added bonus of childlike amusement that makes almost anything seem like a game to him. He reminds me of Peter in a way, except much more open and much more competitive. He backs away from the work table now, crouching down into a defensive position and waggling his eyebrows. "Maybe I did," he taunts, a huge smile on his face. "You got a problem with that? You gonna do something about it?"

I stare at him, expressionless, for just long enough to make him uncomfortable. Two seconds later we are both flying through the air at each other, crashing with a horrendous boom and falling to the ground in a heap of muscles and limbs. Emmett is stronger, but I'm a better strategist, and I duck every one of his haymaker punches and unpracticed holds. I manage to get my arms locked around him in less than a minute, and give his upper body a light, but painfully crushing squeeze to him know I could have killed him if I wanted to. Emmett laughs recklessly the entire time, and we bowl over a sycamore tree like it's made of paper.

Edward sighs. "So much for family togetherness."

"Oh, you feel excluded do you?" Emmett asks, staggering to his feet and lunging across the work table as Edward casually avoids his grab. I approach from the opposite direction and just barely graze his sweater before Emmett tackles him completely and the work table shatters beneath the three of us as we wrestle into a pile.

***

Rosalie looks up from her magazine. "The boys are fighting again."

"Of course they are," Esme sighs, blowing a piece of hair out of her eyes. There are several blueprints in front of her, and she's sketching with a white pencil in one hand in a protractor in the other. She looks out the window with an amused expression rather than frustrated — like a proud mother who simply watches her wild sons with a roll of the eyes and a 'boys will boys' lament. She at beams conspiratorially at me when I enter the room. "At this rate the addition will never be finished, and you and Jasper will have to sleep in that tiny attic forever."

"I don't mind the attic," I say, perching on the arm of the couch. The attic, which we had unceremoniously stolen from Edward, was quiet, warm, and high above everything — as if Jasper and I were sharing a nest at the top of a tree. They had knocked out the back wall years before we arrived and replaced it with a pane of glass, so that when Jasper and I were lying in bed at night it looked as though we were floating in the sky. It was our first place with our new family, our first place as a married couple, and I was already feeling sentimental about the dusty light and quiet corners.

Esme smiles knowingly. "I know you don't mind the attic, dear. But this is our wedding gift. And you should know that a certain someone spent an entire afternoon helping me sketch plans for another certain someone's dream closet."

"Did he really?" I laugh.

Jasper was not romantic — not in the average sense of the word. There were no flowers or cards, no poetry or pretty words. But there were many long quiet looks, many phantom kisses on the back of my neck, and many stolen, heated moments in various corners of the house. I would pass by an open doorway only to be yanked inside and pressed up against a wall, feigning surprise as his cool lips traced a line down my throat and across my collarbone. He gave me gifts often, but always things that either practical or meaningful: a new set of charcoal pencils, a pressed golden leaf on my pillow, a dream closet he designed with my every need in mind.

The boys are visible in the picture window now, sheepishly picking up the wreckage of their fight. I can feel Jasper's eyes on me just as tangible as his hands, and shiver a little at the memory of him and I in the woods, little under an hour ago. He picks up a piece of plywood and hefts it over one shoulder, reminding me vividly of him in Middlebury... hammering at four o'clock in the morning, scattering birds and scaring the hell out of me. Our eyes meet, and I feel hot all over as the corner of his mouth lifts into a sideways smile.

Esme laughs a little. "I could be mistaken, but I believe that man is absolutely smitten with you."

"Definitely," Rosalie agrees, flipping to another magazine page. "I think at this point you could probably get him to do anything you wanted."

I hide a smile. Though Rosalie's more 'mercenary' approach works surprisingly well in her own marriage, I didn't think I could boss Jasper around the way she does Emmett. I wasn't comfortable in such a dominate role, and somehow I don't think Jasper would be comfortable with it either. Despite his love for me, he is definitely not a push-over, and doesn't like to be ordered around or babied. Besides, there wasn't much he wouldn't already do for me willingly. He had given up his diet, his lifestyle, and his past in order to be with me, and when we found the Cullens he had also given up his intense private nature and alone time, too.

If it were up to him, I think he would have stayed with me and me alone forever, forming our own coven and our own life. Certainly the year we spent together alone in search of the Cullens remains the happiest, most beautiful time we've ever shared, surpassing even the early days of Middlebury. But because Jasper is _Jasper_, he could feel my need for family and connection. As displaced as I am without a past, I require some sort of anchor in order to keep my mind and heart in one piece. Jasper never argued or even hesitated in allowing me that, and never once have I ever felt as though I had to drag him here by the heels.

We were finally married last month — in a small ceremony officiated by a slightly bewildered-looking reverend who said he had never seen so many beautiful people congregate in one place. With my affection for parties, fabric, flowers, and dancing, I know Jasper was silently bracing himself for a gigantic wedding debacle complete with fireworks, trained swans, and a troop of acrobats dressed as cherubs. But out of love and respect for him I kept it simple, and aside from Peter and Charlotte, who travelled all the way across the country to be there, the Cullens were our only guests.

My one extravagance was my dress, a Dior design that I altered to my own specifications and dressed up with yards of French lace. I went with champagne fabric instead of virgin-white because of my freakishly pale skin, and the effect of the warm pinkish-gold shade with my hair and eyes was almost frighteningly beautiful. When I reached the end of the aisle and Jasper took my hands in his, he looked at me as if he didn't mind the fact that he was wearing a suit, or the fact that he now had to live off the blood of animals for the rest of eternity, or the fact that I had moved him into a house full of other vampires where he would never have any privacy or space. He looked at me like I was an angel, and his gift filled the whole church with such sweeping love and joy that the reverend had trouble conducting the ceremony.

"I think Jasper's already done more than enough for me, Rose," I say with a grin, watching him try to explain proper hammering technique to Emmett (who appears to be merely punching in the nails with a sideways fist).

Esme clears her throat. "Has he given any more thought to enrolling with you four in the fall?"

The change of subject jerks me back to reality, and I realize that Esme has probably been tactfully trying to bring this up ever since I entered the room. She worries about Jasper, whose quiet ways are still a bit of a mystery to everyone in the family (except Edward, of course). I smile reassuringly at her, but know implicitly that Jasper's answer on high school enrollment will be 'no' for a very, very long time. "He would love to attend a university— we've talked about that for years now. But the idea of high school is much more difficult for him. In order to control himself, he needs the freedom and flexibility of being able to come and go as he pleases."

"He's very tall..." Esme muses, watching him stride by the window. "He could pass for college-age easily."

Rosalie immediately looks up from her magazine, with an expression akin to panic. "We can't do that. We already told those colleagues of Carlisle's that Jasper is my twin— and I'm only supposed to be a senior this year. Unless you want to draw even _more_ attention to us by having him skip a grade. And frankly I think enough attention has been drawn to him already with the whole 'unable to attend public school for medical reasons' thing."

"He does very well in his studies," Esme reminds her gently.

"We all do," Rosalie says in a flat, unwavering voice. "I don't want to make anyone suspicious. I like it here. I don't want to move. Can't Jasper just wait another year? After that, we can all go to the university together."

Her last sentence sounds like gibberish to me, garbled and floating in the air without any kind of connection. The walls shimmer before me with lightheadedness, and my eyes blur. For at least a couple of seconds, I try to hang on, knowing that I'm in the middle of a conversation and now is not an appropriate time for a vision. But in the end it's a fruitless effort — I can't stop this vision anymore than I can stop the sun from rising. Slowly, I can feel myself fading, my mind emptying away from the present into the future...

In the vision, all eyes can see is white. White. White over every inch of the landscape, white across the horizon, white thickening the air. Faint streaks of red stain the seamlessness, stamping the ground like footprints. My back feels hot— too hot, oddly searing in the storm.

"Alice?"

I blink my eyes, and focus to find both Esme and Rosalie staring down at me. I had fallen off the arm of the couch and landed flat on my back, my legs bent beneath me at an odd angle. Esme looks concerned, and Rosalie looks regretful. "I didn't mean to sound rude, Alice," she says, helping me back to my feet and brushing the wrinkles out of my dress. "I'm really sorry. We've just been down this road so many times already with Emmett, and I hate having to move—"

I hold up a hand to stop her. "It isn't that. I'm not upset. I just saw something... strange."

"What is it?" Esme leans over me protectively, and curves an arm around my shoulders. I've never known what it's like to have a mother, but she reminds me so much of Margaret in these moments that it makes my chest ache. As much as I love it here, there are times when I deeply miss Middlebury: my quaint little house, a yard full of red-leaf sugar maples, Margaret's keen eyes and practical wisdom. Of course, back then, I had to keep my visions to myself. Back then, I was living in a town full of humans and my visions weren't something anyone would have welcomed or understood. Especially if they were as odd and nonsensical as this one.

I try to think of how to explain what I saw, and fail miserably. "Snow," I say slowly, and both of them stare at me with quizzical doubt. "I saw... snow."

"In July?" Rosalie asks, casting a glance out the window.

I laugh shakily. "You're right. I'm sure it's nothing," I say, but it's not. For once I have no idea what's about to happen.

***

At night, well after the humans of Calgary have gone to sleep and the summer air is cool and dark outside of our window, Alice and I lay in the attic bed with the lights still aglow. Something soft and bluesy is playing on the radio, and she is lying half across me with her sketchbook on my chest, drawing what looks like a snowy landscape. I find the landscape puzzling — Alice rarely sketches landscapes unless there's a vision backing them, and her unsettled aura indicates that whatever the vision might have been about, it wasn't pleasant. She is so involved in this replicating this image that she doesn't even notice I put my book down and gently stroke her back.

"You're quiet tonight."

Her pencil slows to a stop, and she hangs her head a bit, not looking at me. "Are you happy here, Jazz?"

I don't answer her at first, but only trace my fingers over hers and smile. Strange how she always seems to know what I'm thinking about. Sometimes she reads me so well that I almost think she's inherited a bit of Edward's talent. The truth is, I _am_ happy — she _makes_ me happy. No one makes me smile, laugh, or feel love like Alice. After years of being miserable and alone, nothing could possibly make me any happier than the angel in my arms. But I know this is not what she's really asking. She doesn't want to know if I'm happy with her; this is evident enough in everything I say and do. She wants to know if I'm happy with the Cullens.

"Did you know," I say thoughtfully, brushing my lips against her hair, "that in all the years I was friends with Peter, we never once wrestled or played games or even really touched? An occasional clap on the back, yes. Maybe a cuff on the shoulder. But not like this— not like Emmett. I'm not used to being attacked. I'm not used to being teased. I'm not used to Esme kissing me on the cheek or Carlisle putting his hand on my shoulder. I'm not used to any of this. But, yes... I am happy. I feel a little like I'm just now learning how to walk, but I'm happy."

"You don't want to leave?"

I look at her searchingly, alarmed by the fear in her aura. "Where is this coming from, darlin'?"

She presses her lips together as if to keep herself from saying something, and only shakes her head and clings to me, the sketchbook crumpling between us. Whatever it is, she isn't ready to tell me. I accept this with a heavy heart. The two of us have learned about secrets and hiding feelings the hard way, but I respect her enough not to push. Not right now. Not when she only needs to be held, reassured, and whispered to. I pull her close to me, and fold her into my arms the way she likes — touching every part of her so that she knows I'm solid, real, and immovably, unbearably in love.

"I'm not going anywhere," I tell her firmly, and I mean it with every part of me. "Not without you."

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**A/N:** Snow in July, hmm? Wonder what that could be about. :) Thank you so much for all of the reviews and encouragement, everyone! It makes me feel awesome to know that people are still reading even though Law of Gravity is completed. Next chapter: Maria and Second on the hunt for Jasper... along some special guest stars.


	3. Talent, or a Lack Thereof

**Talent, of a Lack Thereof**

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"Tell me again why we're hiring a tracker."

After wasting nearly three days of my remaining thirty to return to Monterrey for cash and a necessary item, Second and I are wandering the outskirts of Memphis, on the lookout for the dilapidated shack that contains my only hope. The shock of my current situation has now worn off, and the numbness has subsided to reveal a prickling bedlam of hatred. I hate the Louisiana coven. I hate the Volturi. I hate Jasper. I hate the dress I'm wearing. I hate myself. And most of all right now, I hate Second, who is an unpleasant witness to every facet of this: my lowest, most unfortunate moment. "Because I need to find someone."

Second gives me a look. "Yes, I could have figured that much out, thank you. But why can you not track this phantom vampire by yourself?" he asks, raising an eyebrow. At my stony silence, he smirks and gives a little laugh. "Ah. I see."

I have no discernable talent, as Second well knows. In fact, for a vampire of my status, I am remarkably ungifted. My senses are only slightly above the average human capabilities, and I have never displayed the potential for any other special ability. I built and cultivated my army by exploiting the gifts of others. Aware of my own weaknesses, I recruited and kept only the newborns who exhibited exceptional and sometimes highly unusual talents, talents that I could use. As was the case with Jasper, Kade Lykes — and even Second himself. The smug look on his handsome face right now is due to the fact that we are both keenly aware of his formidable gift.

I hold my head high. "I don't have to be talented in _every_ possible area."

"Or, indeed, any areas at all," he agrees casually. I glare at him, and he simpers back, secure in his own necessity.

After searching for about an hour through the backwoods of Memphis, stopping only once to feed on a group of drunken teenage boys lounging on the riverbank, we finally locate the door of broken-down, vine-covered shack with busted windows. It is even shabbier than I remembered; the wood is rotted, and the yard is littered with hundreds of uncollected, soggy old newspapers. The windows are dark, but I can both hear and smell the distinct signs of our kind. Traces of human blood linger on the walkway like raindrops, and the peaches growing on the massive tree in the yard have fallen off and decayed on the ground, uneaten. Second sneers in disdain, and kicks open the rusted gate as if afraid to touch it with his hands. "What a sty."

I knock twice on the paint-peeled door, and it opens instantly, much quicker than I expected — but just a crack. Just enough to see two beady scarlet eyes glowering back out at me.

"What?" a raspy, croak of a voice asks; the voice of a man much too old to have been changed. An anomaly among the beautiful creatures of our kind, the only possible reason for Actaeon's presence in our world must have been an accidental changing. No vampire would have willingly wanted this monstrosity for a lifelong companion. He has the perpetually stooped posture and disagreeable temperament of a senile goat, and a thatch of grizzled white hair that sticks straight up as if he's been struck by lightning. I bite my tongue at his rudeness, and arrange my features into my warmest, most appealing smile. The truth is I hate this wretched old man and the fact that I am now forced to snivel at his feet for help — but I can't do this without him, and I know it.

"Actaeon, my dear old friend! How _have_ you been? I—"

"$500,000 in cash. Half now, half when I find your mark," he says flatly.

I feel like clawing him across the face, but Second stays my hand. "Agreed."

From out of his knapsack, Second withdraws a small article of clothing: a mint-green dress made of liquid silk. Almost three years ago on a rainy night in Beaumont, Texas —when Second was nothing more than a fresh-out-of-the-box newborn— he had stolen this dress out of a hotel room that some ugly little tramp was sharing with Jasper. His new _mate_, I was told, for they were traveling together like a nomadic coven. While Kade Lykes and three other soldiers were unceremoniously slaughtered that night in a "mysterious warehouse fire," Second disappeared with the storm and returned to me in Monterrey, toting this mundane scrap of clothing in hand.

"This is hers," I say, taking the dress and holding it between two fingers like a piece of dirty trash, clearly unimpressed with Jasper's choice in women. "Female, aged in her teens, black hair, extremely small." I pause. "She has yellow eyes."

That certainly perks the old man's interest. He opens the door a bit more, and peers at the dress with unconcealed curiosity. "An abstainer?" he muses, touching the fabric. "How very, very interesting. But no, if that is the case, then it is impossible. The deal is off," he abruptly adds, and slams the door the shut in our faces. From inside, his muffled voice continues on as he re-hooks the security chain. "I do not hunt those who hunt animals."

"Why ever not?" I demand, outraged.

"They leave no blood trail. No murder records. No bodies. No cities."

"$750,000," Second offers coldly.

The door opens once again, and the old man steps out onto the porch, already in the process of buttoning a dirty wool coat. "A pleasure doing business with you."

For days, precious days in which my dwindling time is being wasted, Actaeon leads us on a winding, pointless trek through cities, forests, and mountain passes. The trail is completely baffling – there appears to be no rhyme or reason to the old man's decision process – neither Second nor I can smell, see, or hear what he's tracking. At times, we circle through the same area three times or more, and there are several instances when the old man stops, turns, and starts running again in the opposite direction. He spends an hour in Wichita circling reverently around some grain silo as if it holds the key to everything he seeks. I am willing to overlook the oddness of Actaeon's hunting-style if it means finding Jasper and his little strumpet, but Second does not share my generosity. He thinks the old man is batshit crazy, and he doesn't bother hiding it.

"Does he even know where we're going?" Second mutters under his breath after the first week. It is mid-day, and we are running through the empty plains of Nebraska; a flat, ugly landscape of tall brown grass and the occasional field of corn. The weather is fitting miserable, alternating from freezing rain to pelting hail the size of golf balls. Second's perfect hair is matted and tangled around his face, and both his cheeks are slicked with rain. He raises his voice confrontationally when a crack of thunder shakes the earth. "Do you even know where you're going?!"

The old man doesn't answer and continues on as if he didn't hear, plodding through the tall grass like a cow. Seconds swipes the wet hair out of his eyes, and sneers at Actaeon's back with undisguised loathing. "We are wasting our time with this batty old circus freak. We're wasting our time with this _entire_ half-cocked idea. We should just run. We should just get out of the country and go someplace new. Europe. South America. Russia. I don't care. Anything is better than following this hobgoblin on a wild goose chase."

"The Volturi will find us wherever we go," I say sullenly, picking up the soaking wet hem of my dress and dropping it again in disgust. Four hundred dollars worth of satin and Spanish lace, ruined. I look like a drowned hooker, and glare at Second as if every bit of this is his fault. "Demetri, one of the Volturi guard, is the most gifted tracker in the world. He can find anyone anywhere."

"Then why the hell didn't we hire _him_?"

"This is my plan, _mi amor_, and if you remember correctly it was my money that we paid him with. So why don't you just shut your mouth, mind your own business, and try to look pretty, hmm?" I tuck a strand of dark hair behind his ear, and Second swats my hand away peevishly. I draw back with a hiss, and grab him by the collar of his jacket, yanking his face down to mine. Things may have changed between us in the past ten days, but not enough for him to manhandle me. "Have your temper tantrum somewhere else," I snarl, close enough to see a flash of lightning reflected in his ruby-red eyes. "Actaeon is not your concern."

"Oh, I think I have a right to be concerned, _kitten_." He wrenches away from me, and thunder shakes the earth again, this time accompanied by a volley of hail. "We only have twenty days left, and 'Methuselah' up there doesn't even know which way is _north_."

"Stop it," I hiss through my teeth. "You're not helping. Actaeon might be old, but—"

"And he smells. Don't forget that," Second adds sourly. "He smells like a diseased _hobo_, and we are _walk_ing down_wind_."

The old man stops abruptly, splashing to a halt and whirling around to face us. I wince, imagining that Second's childish hissy fit has mortally offended him, but Actaeon's gnarled face is blank, searching. He spins around in a circle as if he hadn't even heard a single word we said, inhaling deeply, sweeping at the air with his hands. His nose crinkles, then twitches, nostrils flaring as he tastes the air. When he finally opens his eyes again and takes off in a completely different direction, Second huffs. "Oh God. What now? What? Where are you going?"

"There are others of our kind in the area," Actaeon informs us softly, squinting into the distance. The storm has finally relented, and the clouds above have faded to reveal a blindingly sunny day. Beads of rain cling resolutely to the grass, and the puddles on the ground glint like pools of light.

I sigh, and press my fingers against the hollows of my eyes. "And?" This is nothing new. We've already come across several other vampires and managed to politely avoid them without bloodshed or comment. The back roads between the bigger cities are well-traveled by our kind, like some grotesque blood-drinking mockery of the Oregon Trail. And as much as I detest the snotty nomadic vampires who stare at Second's scars and my hardened eyes as if we're demons ascended from the underworld, I simply do not have time for murder right now.

"They have been with your target. Recently."

My head snaps up, and the image of Jasper leaps to mind: the stoic, impassive face, the tousle of golden hair across his forehead... Could it be him, out here in the middle of nowhere? Had he abandoned the doxy? The emotionless Jasper I knew never would have fallen in love in the first place, so the idea of him leaving his 'mate' behind was not that abstract to me. Fine with me — that would make my task enormously easier, although I would no longer be able to use her as bait if he refused. I look at the flat edge of the horizon, as if I expect Jasper to coming striding into view any moment. "Are you sure?"

Actaeon peels back his upper lip into a grimace. "I am old, not stupid. This _is_ what you're paying me for, is it not? These others were with her a month ago or less. It is her scent on them that I have unknowingly been tracking."

Second rolls his eyes.

"Which way?" I ask, undeterred.

The old man turns and points toward the nearest city, a scattering of tall buildings next to a blue river that glimmers in the sunlight. "That way. Omaha, downtown. There are two of them, and they have taken the lives of at least three humans within the past twenty-four hours. But—" he looks at me apprehensively, his eyes trailing over my sparkling skin, then seems to realize what Second and I have known all along: I have nothing to lose. I have sunk so low that I no longer even care about exposing myself to humans. His eyes dart away with a regretful look on his face, as if he's wondering what sort of a mess he's gotten himself into. "Nevermind."

"Watch him," I warn Second. "If he bolts with my money, I'll hold you responsible."

Second sniffs. "I'm shivering. Really."

I take off for the city of Omaha at a face pace, running parallel to the train tracks that line the cornfields. My skirt is far too long and voluminous for quick travel, so I sweep it up into with one hand and clench the fabric between my fingers. It feels odd to be in the sunlight like this, to feel heat on my skin where before I had felt nothing but moonlight and rain. Odd, and freeing somehow. The worse has already happened. Everything has already been taken away from me. I'm already wanted and hated by the Volturi, and probably going to die anyway. If this is it, if this is my last chance, then why bother abiding by the rules?

I enter the city near the river, and slip into an alleyway on my immediate left, closing my eyes to focus. My sense of smell has always been the weakest; that was how I was able to better control my thirst my thirst, even as a newborn — I couldn't smell blood the way the others in my coven could. I concentrate as hard as I can now, trying to separate the plethora of scents around me: garbage, human blood, river-water, ice cream, and something tantalizingly spicy-sweet and familiar. My eyes snap open, and I lift my head toward the busy street. They are close, very close, close enough to see. I saunter through the alley, blinking as my skin hits patches of sun and shines like a tilted mirror.

The crowd of humans on the sidewalk are bustling to and fro and talking at high volumes, all dressed in the thin, pastel materials of high summer. No one notices me in the shadows, and I idly imagine how easy it would be to snag someone by the neck and draw them back into me, emptying them of their blood before they even realize they'd left the sidewalk. The alley is near an intersection, and loud automobiles are waiting on a red light, engines grinding and chugging incessantly.

Then, from across the road and the now-moving line of cars, I see them.

There are two, a male and a female, strolling on the sidewalk opposite of me, arm-in-arm like any normal human couple. It is not Jasper, I can see that immediately, but there is something vaguely familiar about them, something that triggers some deep, sleeping emotion within me. The two of them pass on and continue down the shaded side of the street, clearly in a hurry to avoid the sun; the female keeps looking up at the sky is if she can't believe her misfortune. They are both pale-haired and slight, and look so similar that if it weren't for the distinct bond of romantic togetherness between them, I could have mistaken them for siblings.

I step out of the alleyway when a cloud passes over the sun, and follow them surreptitiously from the other side of the street. I am twenty feet away from them when the male suddenly halts, his whole body becoming rigid with unease.

The woman stops too. "Peter?"

Peter swivels around slowly, and the instant his eyes lock on mine, recognition hits me like a punch in the stomach.

"_YOU!" _I scream out loud, half out of shock and half out of rage.

The humans surrounding me startle and turn to gawk — the cloud has passed and the sun is fully shining now, glinting off my skin like diamonds. The humans seem frozen in terror, and stand in my way like lumps of fleshy ice. Furiously shove them back with one sweeping hand, and they bowl each other in their hurry to get away from me, scrambling over each other like cockroaches. Somebody falls and cracks their head against the sidewalk, spreading the rusty, delicious scent of blood through the air. Without thought of exposure, decorum, or consequence, I stalk forward with my hands clenched and my teeth bared, hissing like a cat.

"Where is he, Peter?" I demand, my eyes so hot they feel like slivers of coal.

This was the man who stole Jasper. It was him, his whispers, his lies, his ideas, that sent Jasper running away from me. Away from me and into the arms of some animal-eating mongrel. If it weren't for Peter, if it weren't for his filthy newborn bitch, Jasper would still be with me. He'd still be my second. He'd still be mine. Peter and I both know this — something passes between us as we stare unblinking, both of us knowing that this will end in death; his or mine, it doesn't matter. _He ruined everything_, I think, forgetting all else, seething with an anger so hot that I'm blinded by it, burned by it from the inside out. _He ruined everything._

Peter jerks back and takes off at a run with his mate, careless now of the sun beaming on their skin and the gasps emitting from the crowd. But I am right behind them, shoving aside the humans and trampling over the ones who get in the way, picking up my skirt and jumping over the honking cars that skid to a stop in the intersection.

The two of them scamper across the street wildly, dodging and ducking as I leap from the top of a pedestrian bus and land in front of them with a pavement-cracking boom. I barely graze the collar of Peter's shirt with outstretched claws, ripping the fabric and causing him to give a loud guttural growl. He shoves me with back with a surprisingly strong hook, and I land on all fours and wait with a glittering-eyed smile, thinking he would finally turn to fight — that we would have it out right here in the street. But he doesn't. He tucks his mate into his arm like a football, turns, and barrels through the double-doors of the Union Station.

White with rage, I smash through the glass window without breaking stride, busting through in an explosion of shards, screams, and fresh human blood.

The humans scamper, falling, running, dodging in different directions as I slowly walk through the chaos, my eyes locked on the two vampires in front of me. "Where is he, Peter?" I ask, deadly quiet, crunching broken bits of glass beneath my feet.

Peter grabs his little female by the hand and drags her behind a marble column for cover — as if that's going to stop me. I charge forward, bash my fist sideways, and the entire column explodes, knocking back the crowd of frightened humans and nailing them to the floor with chunks of marble shrapnel.

"Where's Jasper, Peter?" I ask again, a little louder. "Where is he?"

I whip a hand out and manage to snag my nails into the gauzy summer fabric of the female's skirt. She tears it back with a deceptively weak little cry before twisting around and backhanding me hard enough to send me stumbling back. "You can't have him back!" she yells out nonsensically, fighting against Peter when he tries to pull her back. "He's not yours! You can't have him!"

Peter wrangles her away and the two of them turn and run for the outside train yard, practically tripping over their own feet in their desperation to get away from me. A train is departing in the near distance, an endless cargo train with an indiscernible logo painted on the side. Peter and the female jump off the platform as one and dash after it, with me hot on their heels. Peter reaches the train first, swings his mate onto the roof and follows her, sliding open the side-door with a rusty screech. I speed up until I'm running alongside the car, a foot away from the open door, my breath coming out in a series of uncontrolled hisses and snarls. Just as both Peter and the female get inside and attempt to close the door, I snake out a hand and grab the ledge. With a grunt, Peter slams the door shut in an attempt to cut off my hand, but the metal only warps and traps me, dragging me alongside the train.

My dress snags, rips, and tangles up around my legs — I bounce twice before I push off the ground, clamp my hand onto the side of the door, and wrench it back so hard that it loosens and hits the tracks with an explosion of sparks. I leap into the train car, panting, and turn to find Peter and his mate cornered against a stack of chicken crates, looking very much as if they think I am the devil.

"_WHERE IS HE?"_

Peter launches himself at me. "Jump, Charlotte! Go!"

Without even stopping for a moment to question his command, the pale-haired female leaps off the train. Out of the corner of my eye I can see her hit the ground and roll, disappearing beneath the tall blades of prairie grass.

Peter watches her go with such a look of complete misery and fear that I am certain this woman means everything to him — that nothing would hurt him more than to watch her die. This is his weakness. This is his downfall. And, eye for an eye, life for a life, I will take from him what he took from me. Spinning around on my heels, I dart toward the open door after Charlotte. I am mid-jump when Peter grabs me by the hair. He yanks me backwards with a growl and rips what feels like every strand of hair out of my head. He slams me into the far wall of the train with a crack, and then charges at me again, his hands at my throat before I can get to my feet.

"You will _never_ touch her," he spits out, his face inches away from mine, eyes wild. "_Never_."

Fine. As if I actually care about his delicate, inconsequential little playmate. I am after one thing and one thing only, and I'll be damned if I don't get it. I rear back, kick my feet up, and throw him backwards and away from me. He hits the floor spinning and flings across the slick metal surface, almost falling out through the open door. I am on top of him in seconds, my nails piercing into his throat, grinding his neck into the ledge. Behind his head is nothing but empty air — the sound of the train grating on the tracks below sounds like a roaring demon. I press harder down, and can feel the flesh beneath my fingers weakening — in half a second his head will snap off and be crushed.

"_WHERE?!" _

Then, somehow, I am bucked up into the air, and pitched out the open door. I cling to Peter with a snarl, and the two of us somersault off together, hitting the ground with an almighty crash that causes an impact crater and an explosion of rocks. Sky, ground, train, sky, ground, train, sky ground, train — everything spins in an endless, bewildering tumble of nails, punches, and guttural growls, until we crash into a fence of barbed wire and separate.

I hit first and tangle up in wire, my dress caught on thousands of hard-edged nubs. It wraps around me a dozen times before I finally stop rolling, and when I clamber to my feet I immediately stumble over and fall again. Both my arms are pinned to my sides, and fighting to free myself only succeeds in ripping my dress and gouging my own skin. Next to me, Peter is struggling as well, his own arm somehow trapped around his neck, his pant leg ripped to shreds.

"Peter!" someone screams out in a desperate, horrified voice.

Peter's mate is running toward us, and at the sight of her he draws in a sharp breath and lashes out of the twisted wire. While I fight to untangle myself, he dashes toward her on unsteady feet, tripping twice before he finally makes it to her side. She gasps out something like a sob, and Peter places both hands on either side of her face and stares at her for a short, intense moment, as if to verify that she's still alive and unbroken. Something passes between the two of them that I have never felt — not with Jasper, not with Second, not with anyone. It is love at its purest, without conditions, reparations, or agenda. And even in my fury, it pains me.

The two of them turn as one and sprint after the departing train, leaving me behind in the dust.

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**A/N:** Intense, eh? I'll never be able to ride Amtrak again.

Any guesses yet on what Second's talent might be? (Besides making me laugh out loud while I'm writing his dialogue). Clever readers may have an idea, but all will be revealed in good time. Next chapter: I think Jasper can probably expect a very pissed-off phone call from Peter. :D


	4. One of Our Own

**One of Our Own**

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Shopping is not a shallow thing to me; it never has been. I spent the first few years of my life running around in rags, wearing ill-fitting shoes and stealing from other people's clotheslines. There was an isolation in that, a loneliness. Back then, I already felt like enough of a freak, enough of a monster, and the way people had stared at me in the streets, at my grungy bare feet and torn, bloodstained gown, only seemed to confirm this. To have my own money, to buy my own clothes, to look polished and pretty and normal… these were honest, deep desires and needs. I wanted to blend in. I wanted to belong. I wanted hold just a small piece of a normal life my hands — the normal life that I would never truly have for my own.

And there were the colors, of course: velvety red, watery lilac, envy green, creamy yellow… a thousand different shades of blue, white, pink, and orange. And the feel of different fabrics on my fingertips and against my cheek: cashmere, silk, feather-soft wool. In exchange for smooth paper bills, I was handed thick paper bags with rope handles and stylish logos, boxes with soft folds of tissue paper and yards of satin ribbon. A weight in my hands, swish and crinkle of packages brushing against my legs. And here, people smile at me just to smile — the cashiers, the other shoppers, the eager-to-please concierge.

I feel more human here than anywhere else in the world, like any other flesh and blood woman who delights in the promise of something new and beautiful.

When the elevator door opens with a ping, I step out and adjust the shopping bags into the crook of my elbow, peeking into one of them with a smile. It wasn't my largest shopping excursion ever, not by far, but I had made some decent progress on preparing for the upcoming Fall season. Along with several dresses, coats, cardigans, scarves, hats, and gloves, I also purchased a new pair of boots for Jasper, and a navy-blue military coat I knew he'd love. As much as he teases me about it, I know he understands and empathizes with this odd compulsion of mine. He accepts my gifts with a warm compassion that lets me know he sees the deeper reason behind why I dress him, why I dress myself, and why I always feel so at peace when I come home with something new.

I find Rosalie and Esme at one of the registers on the ground floor, Esme handing over a stack of bills from her pocketbook while Rosalie examines her already-perfect nails. The cashier, a young, wide-eyed fellow with a cowlick, is staring at Rosalie as if she is the only woman he's ever seen in his entire life, gulping at each of her graceful gestures and nearly falling over when she brushes a lock of golden hair over her shoulder. She spies me walking toward them and grins knowingly — all three of us are used to making men nervous, but Rosalie definitely wears the crown when it comes to eliciting gawking and moments of painful awkwardness. Esme follows her gaze. "There you are. We were wondering where you'd gone to."

I hold up one of my bags — a delicate shade of lavender with white stripes. "Lingerie."

Rosalie shakes her head. "Such a waste of money. Two seconds and it's shredded on the floor like confetti."

The cashier turns a brilliant shade of red at this comment and begins stuttering like an invalid, dropping Esme's change beneath the counter and scrabbling at the spinning dimes and nickels with trembling hands. Esme sighs. "Rose."

Rosalie does her best to look innocent.

I laugh, and as soon as sound escapes me, I can feel it starting — a slow lightheadedness that makes the room seem uncomfortably small. The present disappears and drips into the future: a flickering scene of Jasper and I outside somewhere in the shade. He is sitting, and I am standing behind him, my arms wrapped gently around his neck, my lips brushing the soft skin beneath his ear. He is stroking one of my hands absently, but there is a far-away look on his face that I don't like, a general emptiness to him that makes me feel afraid.

"_Jazz?"_ I ask hesitantly, sliding around so that I'm standing before him instead. I turn his head up so that he'll look at me, and stare deeply into his intense, emotion-filled eyes, my hands numb with worry, my lungs completely breathless. "What's wrong?"

"_Sit down, darlin',"_ he says gently, pulling me into his lap. _"We need to talk."_

I come back to the present with a gasp, but no one has noticed my absence. Esme and Rosalie are picking up their numerous shopping bags and heading for the doors, and the cashier is lumbering after them with the receipt and his card. Slowly, reality seeps back into me: the ring of registers, the smell of Chanel perfume, glint of lights on the ceiling above me. I've dropped one of my hatboxes, and I pick it up numbly before following behind Esme and Rosalie in silence. This was our last stop, and I am absurdly and uncharacteristically grateful for that. I suddenly want to be home, to be in Jasper's arms, more than anything else in the world.

***

"Be careful with that glass."

Emmett glances over at Edward and rolls his eyes. "Yes, mother."

It is mid-afternoon, the sky is sprinkling a light summer rain, and the three of working on the addition at the side of the house again — as Emmett put it earlier, "engaging in manly pursuits while the womenfolk do their shopping." For some reason odd reason that she can never seem to sufficiently explain to me, Alice finds it necessary to begin Fall shopping in July. This time she coerced Esme and Rosalie into going with her, and the house feels strangely empty without them, especially without Alice. Being away from her makes me anxious and edgy; I'm so used to her bright aura being near now that any length of absence feels akin to missing an arm or leg. I am tense and irritable, and my mood is seeping into the others as well.

"Laugh all you want," Edward snaps at Emmett, glaring as our brother mockingly bobbles the window-piece between two steady hands. "But don't expect Jasper or me to rush to your defense if you break that and Esme finds out."

The framework and the roof are in place now, thanks to a long night of working by floodlight while the rest of the world slept, and Carlisle took a rare evening off from the hospital to help. He steps out through the kitchen door now, still wearing his work-pants and collared shirt, but missing the white doctor's jacket. His sleeves are casually rolled up to the elbows, and the top two buttons of his shirt are undone. I wonder idly if the humans of Calgary would think better of us if they could see him now: in a normal, carefree state of less-than-perfection. Sometimes I think we're so concerned with blending in perfectly that we forget the how abnormal our constant flawlessness actually is.

"This is starting to look wonderful, boys, really," he says, walking around the work table. "And Jasper— there's a phone call for you."

I put the tape measurer down slowly, not quite sure I'd heard him right. I've never received a phone call before. Occasionally Alice would ask me to answer the phone for her when she was otherwise occupied, but no one had ever called for me. I wasn't exactly known as the social sort, and the idea of chatting on the phone seemed a bit like torture. "For me?"

Carlisle nods and turns away to help guide the window into the appropriate place, but Edward and Emmett look every bit as surprised as I feel. There is a smile hovering at the edges of Emmett's mouth and a bit of mischievousness in his aura that makes me think he either has something to do with this or is currently thinking up some sort of joke about the situation, probably the latter, knowing him. Keenly aware of their eyes on me, I head back into the cool house and make my way into the parlor, where the phone rests on a mahogany table.

I pick up the receiver and hold it up to my ear awkwardly. "Hello?"

"What in the _**hell**_ have you done?"

I frown. "Peter?"

"She chased us onto a goddamn train, Jasper. A train!" Peter's voice yells back at me. I wince and hold the phone away further away from my ear as he screeches, his voice rising to the shrill, dangerous pitch of just-realized panic. "In broad daylight! With hundreds of human witnesses. She almost killed Charlotte. She almost snapped my head off. I have claw marks on my _neck_. I rolled through a garden of barbed wire. And all she would say was '_Where is he, where is he, Peter? Where's Jasper?' _like a goddamn parrot. Like I'm your goddamn personal keeper. As if I know where you are every second of every day!_"_

"Who?"

He pauses. "Who? Who do you _think_? It was the Easter Bunny, Jasper— it's July and she wants her fucking eggs back. Ma_ria_, you moron. It was Maria. A very angry, very determined Maria. And I've really got to say, Jasper— after what we just went through, I think Char and I have a right to know why that harpy was chasing after us. So what _the hell_ did you do to piss her off?"

Because my knees suddenly feel too weak to hold me up, I lean against the wall with one hand, the other gripping the phone so hard it cracks. "Okay, can you— can you just slow down? Start at the beginning."

"Charlotte and I were making our way across Nebraska, following this big storm cloud so we could stay out during the day." I could barely hear Charlotte's voice in the background, asking Peter to say something about the storm. "I am— I'm getting to that! Anyway, it just stops raining all of the sudden, right? And the sun is coming back out again, so Char and I are trying to get across the square as fast as possible to get into the shadows. And I felt really strange all of the sudden, like I could feel someone watching me. So I waited, and listened, and took a deep breath to smell... and when I turned around, there she was."

"There she was," I echo numbly, my body cold as ice.

"Right, and at first all I can think of is 'I can't believe my years of paranoia have actually just paid off,' but then she just... attacks. Viciously. With intent to kill. And all three of us were exposed, in front of hundreds of people— all of downtown Omaha. She busted through the doors of the train station, smashed a marble column, killed probably at least a dozen humans, chased us onto the train, and had it out with me in the car. We barely escaped with our lives, Jasper. I'm not kidding. She was out for blood. And you're in trouble, serious trouble— because it sounds like she wants you, and badly."

It is like a nightmare, like every possible worst case scenario I've imagined. Maria, even at her most ambitious, had always been fanatically careful about avoiding exposure and attention. To know that she is desperate enough, furious enough, to risk the Volturi's involvement by attacking Peter and Charlotte in front of witnesses is chillingly ominous. I can't feel my hands. I can't feel my feet. There is a dull static roar in my ears that makes it hard for me to hear Peter, or anything else except the quiet ticking of clock in the kitchen behind me. "You're both safe?" I ask.

"Yes. But Jasper—"

"I know. I'll deal with it."

Peter pauses, and even miles apart, I can still feel his internal struggle with emotion — how much to show and how much to hold back, a soldier who isn't used to wearing his heart on his sleeve. Neither one of us has ever been very good at this; at saying what we feel. Maybe it was Maria herself who taught us this, or maybe it was just the hard years we spent in her service, but either way, no matter how close Peter and I really are, the affection we feel for each other will never be spoken out loud. "Take care," he finally says, and we both know he thinks it might be the last time he'll ever get to talk to me. There is a soft click, and then a long, endless dial tone fills my ear.

I place the phone back in the cradle and keep my hand over it for a second, trying to remain calm. Some awful, monstrous pressure is building in my chest, accompanied by strange abstract flashes of my past with Maria. The animated, wild look in her eyes before she killed a human; the cold detachment of her voice when she sent her soldiers to die. Her unfailing, unswerving determination when it came to getting what she wanted. No one was more determined than Maria. No one was more ambitious. If she wanted to find me, if she really did, nothing would stop her. But... why now? Why not three years ago when her man-puppet Kade Lykes had Alice and I cornered in a warehouse in Beaumont, Texas?

_Alice. Oh God. _I clench both hands on the edge of the table and bend my head down, my stomach churning. What was I going to do about Alice? Setting the obvious need for her safety, I can only imagine the look of shock and horror on her face, and the feelings of fear and insecurity that will surface the moment I speak Maria's name. The two of us had already fought and dealt with my past and the pieces it had managed to carve out of my soul, but the fighting had always been in abstract — never a face-to-face battle with the devil who caused it all.

I can't tell Alice. I just can't. However hard and dangerous this may be, the problem is mine and mine alone, and I will deal with it on my own. Alice will never have to know. Jaw set in determination, I turn around — and stumble back in surprise. Edward is standing behind me with his arms crossed.

"You're not going to tell her?"

I narrow my eyes at his disdainful expression. As if he knows what's best for me and my wife. As if he knows better than I how to keep her safe. I may be flawed in many, many ways, but my concern for Alice's protection has never been one of them. Nothing is more important to me than keeping her safe and happy. I've already brought enough trouble and suffering into her life just by simply being who I am. I wasn't about to add to that by worrying her needlessly about the woman who has always haunted us both. There is absolutely no reason why she should ever have to know. I will simply take her someplace safe where Maria can't find us.

Edward sniffs. "That's a stupid idea."

_Fine_, I think furiously, hating him for his haughty attitude and the utter lack of privacy his talent lends to any and all interactions. I push past him through the parlor and into the kitchen, done with this conversation and currently done with him. If moving Alice to a safe location would be too dangerous, then I have no choice but to cut the trouble off at the source. I'll find Maria myself, and take care of her before she can even reach us.

"That's even worse."

I spin around instantly, but Edward steps away before I can get there, and my fist punches straight into the wall, spitting out plaster and creating a jagged hole. Edward ignores both the damage and my livid growl. "You are not on your own anymore, Jasper," he says calmly, and the pity I feel in his aura makes me feel embarrassed and slightly pathetic. His golden eyes are full of gentle determination — a look that reminds me of Carlisle, of Alice, of love. "You joined our family. You're a part of us now. You're one of our own. Your fight is our fight."

I can feel that he's sincere in what he's saying, and a large part of me is touched by this — by the fact that it isn't just Alice who they consider a part of their family, that they value my presence as well. But there is bitterness attached to this realization too; the resentment that comes with being loved when you aren't used to affection, and being pitied when your whole existence has always depended on being strong. "You don't understand," I say curtly.

Edward lifts an eyebrow. "You're right. If only I had _some way_ of getting into your head and hearing what's really going on."

I lean toward him aggressively, and he leans right back, letting out a soft growl of warning — both of us are stubborn and immovable, and things will come to blows if he keeps standing in my way. Edward might know a great many things, but he doesn't know everything; not about me, not about Alice, and certainly not about Maria. He doesn't know what she's capable of, he doesn't know what she's done. He's never been there to see her strategizing a war, ordering her soldiers to slaughter innocents and gorge themselves on human blood, all for another mile of territory.

Carlisle walks into the kitchen then, asking an unheard question about measurements, and takes in the scene with a great deal of alarm: Edward and I facing off with clenched fists and locked jaws, the jagged hole punched through the kitchen wall beneath Esme's antique clock. He sets a pile of blueprints down on the counter slowly and frowns. "Is there a problem?" he asks, looking between the two of us warily, his gaze eventually settling on me. "Jasper?"

Wordlessly, I turn away from them all and leave.

***

Esme and Rosalie are chatting merrily and glad to be home, closing car doors and reaching for shopping bags, laughing about something I can't really hear. But I am quiet, and numb, and stare at the house with a mixture of dread and uncertainty. All I can think about is Jasper, and the vision I had just had, all I can concentrate on is what it might have been that made him look like that — as if the worst possible thing imaginable had happened. I gather my armfuls of shopping bags and follow the other two women in through the door, my eyes already scanning the room for Jasper's face. Carlisle and Emmett are there, but Jasper isn't. I can't feel him or hear him in the house, and though his scent is there it doesn't feel as if he's close. In the rush of talking and laughter that follow, I back into an alcove alone and begin to feel very, very small and afraid.

"He left," Edward says quietly, from the kitchen doorway.

I can't stop the immediate flood of panic. No matter how many times Jasper tells me he's not going anywhere, I still have an automatic reaction of horror when I can't find him. I don't often think of the days we spent apart after the warehouse incident, when I didn't know if he'd ever come back to me or not, but the vestiges of them are still there in my heart; dark prickly memories of staring blindly at a wall, completely detached from my physical being. "What do you mean he's not here?" I demand, my voice slightly higher than usual.

The shopping bags drop haphazardly to the floor, and my hands clutch uncertainly at my chest. Everyone stops talking and turns to look at me, and I feel as though I am about two seconds away from a mental breakdown. Then a stationary vision flashes: Jasper sitting glumly by himself in our favorite shady glen, twirling a blade of grass between his fingers. I let out a breath of relief. "Nevermind."

Edward, who just read my every mortifying thought, stares at me with sympathy and an odd sort of tentativeness. He looks very much as if he wants to say something, but is battling with himself on whether or not to actually speak it out loud. This kind of behavior is puzzling coming from him, because if there is one thing my brother is well -known for, it is speaking his mind — whether people want to hear it or not. But after thirty seconds of internal debate, he only sighs and picks up the fallen shopping bags. "Go ahead," he says kindly. "I'll put these upstairs."

"Thank you," I say, and I wish I could say more, but I suddenly want to be with Jasper so deeply that I truly can't wait — not even to hear what's bothering Edward or why there's a hole in Esme's kitchen wall. I dance past him and the rest of the family to the back door and out into the warm summer air.

Behind the trees, the sun is sinking, but not anywhere near the horizon yet, still burning gold in haze of rosy clouds. The crickets are out, and the birds are still singing; every sound is like one part of a perfectly harmonized song. This shade of light reminds me of other evenings spent alone with Jasper, of the quiet creaking of a porch swing and the sound of his deep voice as he read Charles Dickens out loud. It reminds me of the first time we made love, and the first time we really ever kissed, of a June wedding and the way he looked at me when I was walking toward him with a bouquet of lilies in my hands. The shady glen, which has never seemed that far of a distance before, suddenly feels as though it's an entire universe away from me.

I run until I am less than twenty feet away, and step into the shady light with an irrational dread that he won't be there — that he'll be gone and I'll be left alone; my greatest, most terrible fear.

But then the wonderful cedar scent of him surrounds me like an embrace, and when I step through the trees I can see him there, sitting on a fern-covered stump twirling a blade of grass between his fingers. He is so handsome that, even in his dark moments, he takes my breath away. I love his tousled gold hair and the strong line of his shoulders, the white hands that fit so perfectly around my own. He keeps his back to me, but I know he knows I'm here; his posture relaxes the instant I start walking toward him. I place my arms around his neck and kiss him below the ear, closing my eyes briefly when I feel his hand move over the top of mine.

I slide around until I'm standing in front of him, and turn his face so that his intense golden eyes stare back into my own. "Jazz?" I ask hesitantly. "What's wrong?"

"Sit down, darlin'," he says, pulling me into his lap. "We need to talk."

* * *

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**A/N: **Thank you for your patience with the long update gap.

Christmas is wonderful, and by far my favorite time of year, but I just want to stress to anyone who will listen how deeply hard the holidays can be for some. You've probably heard it all before, I'm sure, but as someone who has spent more Christmases alone than she cares to share, it is a very true, very sad fact. There are people out there who don't have anyone. People who have lost someone. People who can't be with the ones they love. If ever there was a need for kindness and mercy, this is definitely it. I'm not saying you have to go out and volunteer at a soup kitchen or knit handmade socks for the poor, but a smile goes a long, long way. Be friendly, be kind, and know that there are a lot of broken hearts this time of year, and a lot of lonely people who just want to be noticed. If you've been blessed with joy to share, share it. Make a difference. :)


	5. Nonsense and Revenge

**Nonsense and Revenge**

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"So, what's so special about this Jasper guy anyway?"

Second says this casually, but glances at me out of the corner of his eye, as it to gauge my reaction to Jasper's name. Ever since my fight on the train with the subsequent dishevelment of my appearance, he has been uncommonly quiet and bitter, insulting me in a malicious fashion rather than his usual playfulness. It was a shock for him to see me in such a state, and to know the lengths to which I would go to find this _mystery_ _vampire _from my past . He had known all along what this mission was about, but it wasn't until he saw my torn dress, ragged nails, and ratted hair that he realized how desperate I really was. Second was used to a stoic, unfeeling Maria. The one who would rather slay a church full of preschoolers than break a nail.

We are on our way out of a North Dakota farmhouse now, full after feeding on the family of six who lived there and robbing the wife's bureau. After lamenting about the loss of our 'lead,' Actaeon spent half a day sniffing around outside of Omaha, until he finally caught a scent that he could track. The trail somehow led him here — a place he claimed Jasper's tramp might have stopped at one point (but not fed in, as no human blood had been spilled). After a shower in the pint-size bathroom and a change into my last clean dress, I am feeling much more myself again, much more formidable with a shield of makeup and my hair curled luxuriously over my shoulders.

I smile slowly at Second, well aware of my own beauty and the way that it affects him. I thread my arm through his. "Is that jealousy, my little badger?"

He doesn't push my hand away, but scowls at me. "I just find it hard to believe that you could care about anyone."

"Who said I cared about him?"

He shrugs. "You let him live."

I narrow my eyes. "What are you talking about?"

"He abandoned you," Second informs me flatly, a smirk hovering at the edges of his mouth. "Humiliated you, actually. Left you on the dance floor, if the rumors are true, and ran out on you without even so much as a wave goodbye." He glances down at me, and the expression on his face is difficult to interpret. "The woman I know would have hunted him down like a dog and cheerfully relieved him of his testicles."

The memory of Jasper's last night comes back to me vividly, painfully: the yellow light of atrium shining off the marble dance floor, the servers with goblets of blood, the orchestra playing Tchaikovsky in the background. He had just come back from burning the newborns, and still had the sickly sweet scent of smoke clinging to his jacket, a smell like burnt candy and rum. He always called it the smell of death, but to me it was the smell of power — to hold a list of names in your hand and know that you and you alone are in control of each and every fate. I remembered the stiffness of his replies and falseness of his smile; the restlessness that seemed to pervade the entire room.

But mostly, mostly, I just remembered the dead look in his eyes when he dropped his arms from me and turned to walk away — the finality of it, the certainty. He said goodbye without ever speaking, without words or a note or a kiss. He was just done, and I could see it, and we both knew it, however he might have tried to manipulate the writhing emotions within the room. When he walked away that night, I knew it he was walking away forever, and Second is right — I didn't chase him after him. I didn't hunt him down. I didn't demand that he return to me or punish him for wanting to leave. Out of pride, perhaps. Or fear. To chase after him like a woman scorned would only have proven how much he had truly hurt me when he left.

I straighten my shoulders and lift my chin. "When Jasper left, I had an entire army to handle, and owned half of Texas, a quarter of Arkansas, and all of Northern Mexico. I didn't have the time for nonsense and revenge."

Second laughs and pats my hand like he might a small child's. "Right, well, let me kindly remind you of the events that just recently transpired in downtown Omaha. You chased this Peter guy, who may or may not have orchestrated Jasper's desertion, into the middle of a crowded street in front of hundreds of human witnesses, crashed through the window of a train station, and leapt onto a moving _train_. You tore your dress, messed up your hair, and rolled through mud, barbed wire, and what I'm fairly sure was cow manure."

I clench my teeth. "And?"

"Do you think there might be some hostile feelings there?"

My chest tightens at the smug look on his face, and I turn my head away. "No more than average."

Second smirks.

"Why does it matter so much to you anyway?" I demand, feeling very much like an animal backed into a corner. If his many unflattering comments were any indication, Second had made it clear on more than one occasion that he cared about me perhaps even less than I cared about him. At least, on a personal level. There was lust, of course, and something akin to camaraderie at times, but neither one us actually gave a damn about each other. Ours was a mutual relationship built to benefit our needs, and didn't include the usual trappings of love and emotion. Things like jealous, irrationality, and feelings only served to muddy our usefulness to each other.

Second shrugs again. "It _doesn't_ matter to me. But if this comes down to a confrontation— and likely it will— your emotions are going to interfere. We don't have enough time to allow for maudlin displays of spurned affections."

"I was not _spurned_," I spit out instantly, hot all over with rage. "Who said I was spurned? Jasper left because he couldn't cut it. He was too soft and too weak, and when I tried to give him more responsibility, he just couldn't handle it! He couldn't even stomach the killing _hu_mans, let alone his own kind! He wasn't strong enough, end of story. His issue, his weakness. It had absolutely nothing to do with me!"

Second laughs, but this time good-naturedly, and pauses mid-stride lock me in his arms, despite my clawing struggles. "Of course not," he says simply, his lips feather-soft against my ear. "How could anyone tear themselves away from you? As lovely and obliging as you are."

Despite myself I laugh, melting a bit at his touch and the soothing tone of his voice. I shudder when he curves a hand into my hair and rubs the base of my neck, releasing the built-up tension of more than a week with one cool touch. This, also, is one of the perks of our detached, emotionless relationship: the availability of no-strings sex, always further excited by the visible undercurrent of mutual dislike. He breathes into my ear, and my lips automatically move along his jaw, his neck, his mouth.

"I'll get what I want," I murmur softly. "I always get what I want. Jasper doesn't stand a chance. Even if that pixie-sized nymphet he's so enamored with tries to stand in the way."

With his lips still against my own, Second flashes me a smile. "Is that jealousy, my little kitten?"

I throw my head back when his lips find my throat. "I just find it hard to believe that he could care about anyone."

Second lifts me off my feet completely, holding me in place with two strong arms and backing me toward the one lone tree in the middle of the cow field. "Who said he cared about her?"

"Ahem. Excuse me."

Both of us whip our heads around at once, Second more angrily than I. Actaeon is staring at the two of us with an expression of undisguised disgust, his wrinkled face grimacing as if he just witnessed something unspeakably atrocious. He clears his throat again without speaking, and at this insistent noise, Second's hands release my waist, leaving behind cool spots where his palms had heated my skin. I am suddenly overcome with hatred for Actaeon — this tottering old fool who is not only taking lifetime to find a simple target, but who also had the audacity to interrupt an moment which he had no business interrupting. "What?" I snap.

"I _am_ trying to concentrate here, you know. If you two could keep the canoodling down a minimum, I would be much obliged," he says tightly, bristling at my tone.

Second glares. "Yes, and if _you_ could bathe at regular intervals, I would be equally as appreciative."

I toss him a look, and Actaeon draws his mouth into a tight line before turning back to the chosen path and starting off at an angry pace. "Wonderful. Just wonderful. Now you've offended him."

"_I've_ offended _him_?" Second asks in disbelief. "I don't have any senses _left_ that haven't been assaulted by that wretched old gremlin. When he touched me yesterday I swear to God he had some sort of fecal matter on his hands."

I glance ahead. Actaeon is a long way off now and out of earshot, but I lower my voice anyway. "Look, we only have to put up with him for a few more days, okay? A week at the most. Just hold out until he actually manages to lead us to Jasper and Jaspers' little whore. After that, by all means, say whatever you want and do whatever you want. If you're so inclined, you have my permission and utmost encouragement to kill him." I sigh heavily. "Without territory or a steady source of income, I can hardly afford a $750,000 fee anyway."

Second seems pleased enough with this, and even throws a generous smile in Actaeon's direction, probably creating a mental list of all the ways to kill an ugly old vampire without actually having to touch him. Unlike Jasper, murder has never been a source of depression or weakness for Second, rather the opposite, in fact. He always seemed to enjoy the task of what he flippantly called "The Neighborhood Barbecue" — the burning of the year-old newborns no longer of use to me. The newborns, which he treated with an equal amount of sneering disdain, were no great loss to him. Their subsequent slaughter only made him feel that much more invincible. Whereas Jasper would return from the bonfire miserable and taciturn, Second gladly would have worn a party hat.

***

Alice knows what I'm going to say before I say it — I watch her eyes drain of life and then come back again, this time filled with horror. It is not what she expected, and the surprise is almost as overpowering as the fear. Her arms, still wrapped around my neck, grow still and immovable, like a woman carved of ice. "You're not serious?"

There is a moment of hesitation when I debate lying, but I know it won't be worth it. Lying very rarely ever is with Alice. She sees the fabrication before my mouth even manages to open, and often rejects it so vehemently that it makes me wish I'd never even considered the option. It is one of the many things that I love about her: after years of keeping everything to myself and never being able to say how I truly felt, Alice makes it impossible for me to hide. I bend my forehead to rest against her hers, closing my eyes at the familiar sunshine scent of her skin. "Peter just called. Maria attacked them yesterday, in Omaha."

She takes in this information bravely, though I can tell she is thinking the same thing that I am: she is on her way north, and probably only days away from here now. Her aura drains several times as she searches the future, returning each time even more unnerved and unsettled. I can tell by the way she looks at the horizon that she's judging daylight, distance, and time. Whatever is going to happen, it will happen very soon.

I stare at her beautiful face and struggle to remain detached, cool, militaristic. If I allow myself to think of things like the way she feels in my arms right now, or the perfect shape of her lips, I won't be able to let her go. And in order to protect her, I absolutely have to. "We don't have much time," I tell her quietly. "If you and the Cullens would like to stay with Peter and Charlotte, I can make immediate arrangements. I don't know if the family has a place isolated enough to stay hidden if Maria has them tracked, but if they don't, Peter is used to being on the run and I know he and Charlotte would be glad to help."

Alice narrows her eyes immediately. "I can't imagine that you'd honestly think I'd say anything right now other than I'm staying here with you."

"No."

"No?" she demands, her voice cracking. She leaps off my lap in an instant, nearly throwing me backwards with the force of her jump. Her emotions are a jumbled mess, fear the most prevalent, tinged slight with something like insanity — something I'd only felt from her once before. Her hands dig into her hair, and she squeezes her eyes shut like a child trying to escape a nightmare. "You said you weren't going anywhere! You said you wouldn't leave me!"

"I'm not," I say calmly, pouring every soothing emotion that I can into her. "I'm staying here. You're the one who's leaving."

"The hell I am!" she snarls at me. In half a second, her emotion evolves from desolation to white-hot livid fury. She lifts up her hand and flashes her wedding ring at me — the simple, unassuming band that somehow manages to say everything. "For better or worse, Jasper. This is not conditional. This is not you and you alone against the world. This is you, and me, together, against anythingthat dares to come between us. If you try to go after Maria yourself, then I swear to God I will too. And we both know I'll find her before you will."

Her last, challenging sentence makes me feel cold all over. "That isn't funny, Alice."

"Did it ever occur to you that the Cullens would want to help us?" she demands. "That they aren't going to run away and let us face this alone?"

"For you, yes."

Alice was the darling of the family. There had never been even a moment of discomfort with her and any of the others. That was just her nature. She wasn't just _my_ glimpse of sunshine — she was everyone's glimpse of sunshine. Humans, vampires, strangers, family... she managed to light up a room wherever she went, just simply by being _her_ — by smiling, by making a witty comment, by laughing her high, musical laugh. She was open and warm and friendly, and the Cullens had responded in kind. They would do anything for her.

"But not for you?" She kneels down beside me, and takes my hands in hers, her eyes suddenly so full of compassion that I have to look away. "You're wrong, Jazz. Don't you know? Can't you feel it? Can't you see the way that they love you? Even _I _can feel it, sweetheart, and I don't even have your talent. Carlisle calls you 'son.' Esme spent _months_ trying to win you over. Even Rosalie thinks you're beautiful enough to be her twin, which is basically the equivalent of her writing a sonnet. You're a part of the family. We're a part of the family."

"They could get hurt," I say lamely, looking away. Alice is bad enough when she's being stubborn and unreasonable, but it's even worse when she stares at me as if she can see everything written on my heart, even the things I don't want to share. "Maria isn't coming here for them, she's coming here for me. And if they stand in the way, they could get hurt."

"You're worth it to them."

"You don't know that," I snap, angry at my own transparent weakness. "You're not sure of any of this, you don't know how they feel. They might actually _want_ to run away and save themselves — any reasonable person would."

"Would you?" she asks pointedly, smirking because she already knows the answer. If the roles were reversed, if it were Carlisle being hunted, or Esme, or Emmett, or even Edward, I would stay and fight just as aggressively as if it were my own life being threatened, just seriously as if it were own mate were in danger. Alice pulls me to my feet and smoothes her thumbs over the backs of my hands, her golden eyes beaming with love, pride, and optimism. "Just talk to them. That's all I'm asking. Let's go home, together, and try to give our family the benefit of the doubt."

"You're impossible," I mutter under my breath, but what I really mean, what I really wish I could say, is _thank you_.

Alice links her fingers with mine, and smiles. "You're welcome."

***

"We are growing very near to your target."

All three of us slow to a walk when we hit a large clearing, the forest around us barely visible in the dark. I look around immediately. It doesn't look like a place where Jasper would want to live, or at least not anything that he'd be comfortable in. The overhanging branches and vines of the South are missing, replaced with tall tapering pines. The air isn't heavy or damp, but thin and very cool, fragrant with a fresh green scent I don't recognize. Even the night sky looks different to me. The stars shine offensively bright and glittering, in strange new arrangements that I'm not used to seeing, as if the entire universe has shifted around me. "Are we?"

Actaeon nods. "Within a day, I'd say. The scent here is very fresh. They hunted in this area sometime within the past month." He reaches out to a nearby bush and removes something from a tangle of thorns. I squint in the darkness as he holds it up: a tuft of brown, blood-stained fur. "Bear. See the marks in the dirt here? There was a fight, or a struggle, though why I can't imagine unless they were playing with their food. They fed on the bear and then buried the carcasses beneath the roots of that tree."

Second covers his mouth. "That is dis_gust_ing."

I silently note Actaeon's use of the word 'they,' and wonder for the first time if I have any cause for concern. I look around the clearing for the familiar signs of a newborn army: broken branches, graceless footprints, stray glimmers of white marble from inner-fighting. Because Jasper was such a solitary, ambitionless creature, the thought of his building up an army or joining into an established coven had never occurred to me. But if he _had_, Second and I might be in for more trouble than we bargained for. Even the most experienced fighters have trouble when outnumbered, and the long years of war have taught me to be cautious.

"It's just Jasper and the little female, correct? No others?"

Actaeon pauses for just a split second, then smiles. "Correct."

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**A/N:** I guess Maria and Second shouldn't have underestimated the old hobgoblin, eh? Next chapter: the Cullen family discusses a plan, and Maria finally shows up (singing show-tunes and doing jazz-hands, I'm sure).


	6. Snow, Lies, and Betrayal

**Snow, Lies, and Betrayal**

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Jasper tells the family everything in a calm, no-nonsense voice; the voice of a hardened soldier. He stands while everyone else sits, chin up, shoulders back, hands clasped behind him. I've seen him like this only a few other times before, always in bad moments, the moments when he's most afraid. Major Jasper Whitlock is a fallback, the cold persona he crawls back into when he feels as if his real heart isn't going to cut it. Rather than being comforted by his competency, fear unfurls in my stomach at the icy look in his golden eyes. This is a Jasper who could, and would, do anything. This is a Jasper who functions on a completely different level of determination.

I sit quietly on the arm of the couch and gauge the reactions of the others. Carlisle is listening so intently that he isn't even blinking, Esme and Rosalie are stone-still with anxiety, and Edward obviously already knew. His sharp gaze flits back and forth between Carlisle and Jasper, reading the thoughts of one and measuring the behavior of the other. His eyes rest on mine briefly, and he gives me a faint smile, telegraphing sympathy. He can see how much this cold side of Jasper unnerves me.

Emmett's expression is uncharacteristically hard. "Can we take her?"

Jasper flinches slightly, a motion so subtle that only a woman who loved him and knew him could catch it. He didn't expect such a ready willingness from any of them; even after my encouragement and my positivity, he still believed deep down that they wouldn't put their lives on the line for this, for _him_. Though his eyes reflect nothing, I know the poignancy of Emmett's absolute solidarity is not lost on him. His head turns to glance out the window. "If she's alone, perhaps."

"Per_ha_ps?" Rosalie asks with a half-laugh. Emmett is grinning as well. I can see why they're cocky — going by the numbers, seven against one seems like a pretty sure bet, but I know better than that, and so does Jasper. His cool expression silences Rosalie in an instant.

"Maria doesn't operate in a normal fashion," he says flatly. "She doesn't abide by the basic rules and codes of humanity."

Carlisle frowns. "Meaning?"

"Meaning there isn't anything she won't do," Edward answers for Jasper, shooting him a sideways glance as something unspoken passes between the two of them. "If she thinks it would be to her benefit to raze Calgary and slaughter every living human being within a fifty mile radius, she'll do it. Without hesitation. Because we don't possess the same heartlessness, she has an advantage over us, despite the numbers."

"It sounds as if her heartlessness is a _dis_advantage," Esme objects softly. "She has nothing to fight for. We do."

Again, Jasper flinches slightly, and locks his jaw so hard that a muscle in his cheek begins to twitch. The steely shell surrounding him redoubles in strength, and I long to touch him, hold him, soften the hard edges that frighten me so much. He hates this, hates being weak, hates that the Cullens are risking their lives like this. Even after everything that has been said and done, a large part of him was still certain of objection and abandonment. The immediate willingness of the family, especially the willingness of the delicate mother-figure of Esme is causing Jasper's panic to kick into overdrive. Because I can see in a snapshot vision that he is about to explode in anger and desperation, I cover my hand with his, and speak up before he can.

"There is a choice. Jasper and I, we mean that completely. None of you are obligated to stay and fight for us."

Emmett laughs. "Obligated? Hell, I'll _pay_ you to stay and fight."

Carlisle leans forward slightly, steepling his hands in thought. "It may not even come to that. Despite the fact that she attacked Peter and Charlotte, we have no way of knowing Maria's true intentions with us. She may just want to _speak_ to Jasper," he says slowly, then looks up again with fresh determination. "I have a few acquaintances who have taken up residence in the South. They may have heard something about her recently. If you'd like, I can make contact and try to glean some information on what she might be seeking."

"Yes," Jasper says instantly. "Please do." His gaze moves to meet mine as Carlisle gets up and moves toward his study. "How much time do we have?"

I force myself out of the present and into the future, letting my conscience drain into the uncertainty of someone else's decisions. Again, in keeping with the constant theme of all my recent visions, at first all I can see is white. Snow falls in feathery layers around me, like sheaths of lace wrapping around a flat white sky and a snow-covered ground. I can feel it hitting my cold cheeks, soft and whispering, a dusting of white ice on bare skin. The family is standing beside me, ankle-deep in the snow, and Jasper's hand is linked in mine. We are all facing south, expressionless, waiting for an approaching figure to step through the trees. There is light, but it is pale and tinged violet-pink like the first light of morning, fragmented by glow of snowfall.

A flash, a fire, a trail of bloody footprints leading into the distance...

"Dawn," I say shakily, leaving out the rest. "She'll be here at dawn."

Edward gives me a careful look, but his eyes and posture betray nothing to the rest of the family. "Dawn it is, then," he says casually, rising up from the couch. He immediately follows after Carlisle into the study, but I'm not worried about his discretion. I know from experience that he will keep what he saw to himself. Our freakish talents bind us together in a way; there is code of honor surrounding the things we see and the things we hear. We try to respect each other's privacy as much as possible, however hard it may be at times.

Jasper remains standing like he's carved of stone, military-style, his eyes completely dead. He is staring out the window unseeing, his mouth held tight in angst. I imagine this is how Maria had often seen him: expressionless, motionless, a million miles away. When he was her lover and her soldier — long ago, but not long enough to let either of them forget. My eyes start to burn before I can help it, and I reach out for his hand, desperate to keep him here with me. At my touch, he blinks and visibly relaxes, letting out the breath he'd been holding. Slowly, absently, like a man just coming to consciousness, he strokes his thumb along the underside of my palm.

Esme, who misses nothing, glances at Jasper compassionately. "There's no use in worrying ourselves sick. We'll find out what Maria is after, and go from there."

Emmett reclines back into the couch, and wraps an arm around Rosalie's shoulders. He grins at Jasper's solemn expression. "You think she's still carrying a torch for you, Jazz?"

The comment cuts a little too close for me, and for Jasper too. His eyes gain back a spark of life as he narrows his gaze at Emmett, flatly conveying how much he appreciated our brother's sense of humor right now. His thoughts must have been exactly where mine were: on Maria, and the life he had led while he was with her. I knew it wasn't a happy life — that was clear enough from the shame and depression that leaked into the room every time he had to talk about his past. But it was still a _life_, and try as he might, he couldn't deny that. _I_ couldn't deny that.

"Very sensitive, Emmett," Rosalie snaps, as I abruptly stand to my feet.

The walls are closing in on me, and the air is suddenly thick and stifling. I feel like running away. I feel like ripping Maria's head off. I feel like curling up alone in a black room while the world circles on without me. I turn without a word to anyone, and push out the front door into the summer night.

***

Though I want to, I don't follow Alice immediately. I've learned over time that she often needs a moment alone to rearrange her thoughts into something more manageable. Once, when I tentatively asked him about it, Edward told me that Alice's mind is entirely too complex, disjointed by different paths of the future and realities of the present. She doesn't think in the streamlined unity of most people, but in a choppier, detached sort of way. _Like a broken puzzle_, Edward had said, _the pieces are all there, but she hasn't found a way to fit them together yet._

I wait until I can't stand to be away from her any longer, then make my way outside to find her. She is sitting on the porch swing alone, her eyes on the twilight blue sky, one foot tucked up underneath her and the other pushing off the porch railing. At the sight of her upturned face in the starlight, my cold Major Whitlock persona slowly melts away. Because she is sitting off to one side, I know that she has been expecting me, and smile faintly as I take a seat beside her. When she gracefully folds herself toward me and puts her head down in my lap, I run my fingers through her short hair and wonder how it's possible to feel so peaceful in the midst of a nightmare.

For a very long time, neither one of us speaks, and the silence like a breath of air before diving, like a much-needed moment of rest before a race. The two of us swing back and forth in silence and listen to the wind in the trees and occasional hoot of a Great Horned Owl. It is curiously cold for a summer night — the temperature has dropped drastically since sundown, freezing the droplets of rain on the porch rail like a strand of pearls. I twine one of my hands with Alice's and smooth the other over her hair, her shoulder, the curve of her waist and hip, then back again, thinking of nothing more than how precious she is to me, how beautiful. Broken puzzle or not, there was no one in the world like Alice. How she could be here with me, in my arms, is still a mystery I'll never quite understand.

After what feels like hours, she finally curls inward a bit and looks down at our linked hands. "Do you think she followed our trail to Middlebury?"

It isn't a question I had expected from her right now, but I understand her concern. If Maria could follow a trail here, she could follow a trail to Vermont as well — the place where Alice and I had spent the first part of our life together. And unlike our band of vampires here in Calgary, the little town of Middlebury would not be capable of fighting off a demon like Maria. Any number of humans could die before she got the information she was after. "I already checked," I say softly. "I made a phone call to the Middlebury Gazette just now, and the only death they noted in the obituaries was Lars Stevenson, who he died of old age."

Alice turns her face up to me. "You checked?" she asks, her eyes bright with emotion.

"It was my home too, darlin'," I remind her gently. "My fondest memories." I cup her cheek and stare straight into her eyes, intensely, sweeping a wave of unbearable, uncontainable love through me and into her. I want, _need_, for her to feel that this is unchangeable. To know that if anything is certain, it's this. With all that may or may not happen tomorrow, the next day, or the next, my feelings for her should never be something she's unsure of. "Maria might have held me for years, Alice... decades even, but she never managed to touch my heart. You're the only one who ever has."

She presses her lips together. "It's silly, I know."

I skim my thumb along her cheekbone. "It's not silly. I sometimes feel like butchering the men in town for even looking at you. If I actually had to meet one who'd _slept_ with you, I..." I trail off with a strangled growl, literally unable to continue the thought. I'd be liable to break off someone's fingers just for touching her hand, let alone any other part of her. The image of someone else kissing her neck or hearing her whispers makes my hands clench in jealousy. The angry emotion tumbles out of me before I stop it, so unmistakable that I know Alice couldn't possibly miss it. "I wouldn't handle it very well," I finish weakly.

She raises her eyebrows. "I guess it's a good thing old Lars Stevenson is dead, then."

I shoot her a disapproving look. "Alice."

"He was a very sexy senior, Jazz. I couldn't help myself," she says primly, then giggles at my expression. I squeeze her ticklish waist and she throws her head back in laughter, fighting against me fruitlessly until I end up pinning her beneath me on the porch swing. Another owl hoots somewhere in the distance, and I know the family is right inside, but somehow it feels as though we are the only people on earth, the only people who ever existed. Alice stops laughing, and her eyes grow serious, contemplative, staring up at me with so much love that it almost hurts to look at her. She reaches up to bring me down her, and winds her fingers through my hair. "No one but you."

"No one but you," I echo, and I kiss the exposed skin above her heart so that she understands what I mean. My lips find hers in the darkness, and for a long while neither one of us can speak.

And all around us, unnoticed, the first of the snowflakes begin to fall.

***

The snow isn't sticking yet, only soaking into the still-warm summer ground and forming a bed of mud. Tromping down mountainside in kitten-heels and silk stockings, I quickly become as muddy and disgusting as I had been after the fight with Peter. My skin is too cold to melt the snowflakes that fall against me, but my satin dress is streaked with wetness, and the lace is laying flat and shriveled against my breasts. This is not how I wanted Jasper to see me for the first time in decades. I wanted to look fresh, young, and as perfect as I had been the last time he had seen me — dancing in the ballroom of the Monterrey mansion.

I sigh, and Second looks back at me, irritated. "What's wrong with you?"

"I'm not exactly dressed for this," I snarl. I am used to being flawless and pristine, I am used to being the most beautiful woman in the room, I am used to a new tailored-fit dress every twelve hours and human slave who's soul purpose is to curl my hair into a hundred glorious ringlets. I am _not_ used to traipsing through rain, mud, snow, and god knows what else while Second somehow manages to only look handsomely ruffled.

He shrugs and turns away again, ignoring my obvious fit of temper. "Your idea, not mine," he says coolly. "Bring a coat next time."

Behind his head of perfectly tousled dark hair, I mime choking him. Actaeon, who is running behind us for once, snorts in quiet laughter. He speeds up until he is even with my pace, his stubby legs splashing even more mud on the skirt of my dress. I cringe in restraint, and think of how easy it would be to pluck the little gnome up by the shirt collar and pitch him off the side of the mountain. He is uncharacteristically cheery this morning, as chipper as the birds hopping in the tree branches above us. Earlier, when the sun had been nothing more than a dim blue glow on the horizon, I actually heard him whistling

"Miserable weather!" he says cheerfully. "And in July too! Extraordinary, isn't it?"

"Exquisite," Second grumbles. "I love how my sense of smell is completely shot."

"Yes, I hope it doesn't make it too difficult for you to track," I say sweetly to Actaeon, donning my most convincing helpless-female look. "I can't smell a _thing_ with all this precipitation on the ground."

Actaeon puffs out his chest a bit, strutting like a geriatric peacock. "Fresh snow isn't a problem for me. But add three or four feet to this and it would become a problem for anyone. It's very difficult, if not impossible to track someone through a blizzard."

I smile.

At the end of the rocky slope, the vista opens to reveal a city still glittering with the yellow lights of nighttime, not yet awakened to the curious weather settling on its streets. It is a city all green with pines and leafy trees, with a ribbon of blue river running between the two halves. Set off by the sudden cold, a thick layer of fog is rolling off the water, spreading through the city buildings like a ghost. Behind the curtain of steady snowfall, it looks farther away than it actually is, the lights and buildings muted by the white. In the shady areas of the valleys and forests, a thin layer of diaphanous snow is already covering the ground. "The city of Calgary," Actaeon says needlessly.

"Is this is it?" I ask instantly. "Is this where Jasper is?"

A long pause. "I'm not certain yet."

"You found that Peter guy and his mate from miles outside of Omaha," Second says flatly.

"Yes, and look at what a mess that turned out to be," Actaeon shoots back, glaring at Second malevolently. "We'll need to get closer. The scent is presently too faint. They may not even be living here."

But as we descend from the mountains and into the thick forest bordering the city, I catch the scent –- a unique, masculine, cedar smell that I remember just as vividly as if I were standing right next to him, holding the lapels of his military jacket and pressing my lips against his. _Jasper_. I very nearly shudder in anticipation, and casually test the air again, picking up the faint spicy sweet strands of another vampire's scent, maybe more than one. I dare to shoot a look at Second. If _I _can detect it with my own weak sense of smell, I know he can too. But it is a mark of Second's rigid self-discipline that he produced no visible reaction — not even a flicker of recognition in his eyes.

In front of his body, where Actaeon can't see, he casually flashes seven fingers at me.

Seven! I have to bite my lip to keep from screaming in rage. Actaeon was knowingly leading us into a coven of _seven_ vampires, and not newborns either. It would be like walking into a slaughterhouse. They'd kill us before we barely stepped into their territory, _maybe_ allowing enough time for Actaeon to turn tail and run like the goddamn coward he so obviously is. Hatred burns like fire in my stomach, roiling there with the indignation of betrayal and the thrill of murder. No one betrays me like that and lives to tell about it. _No one._

I hold out my hand and catch a snowflake in my palm, staring at the intricate shape of it with a calm sort of reminiscence. "Snow always reminds me of Nettie. She had the hair so blonde that it was almost white. Did I ever tell you about her, Second? Nettie, and Lucy?"

Second cocks his head innocently. "The ones who betrayed you?"

I nonchalantly ignore Actaeon's flinch, and heave a sigh. "It was a terrible tragedy. I trusted them, you know. I never wanted to believe that they could actually lie to me and knowingly lead me into danger." Beside me, Actaeon's posture stiffens into a more cautious gait, but I keep my eyes on the horizon instead of the disheveled old vampire next to me. "The warning signs were clear enough, though. I should have known. The hesitation, the stiffness, a general feeling of paranoia. Sometimes you can tell what a person is planning just by the way they carry themselves when they walk."

Actaeon stops abruptly, skidding in the snow as he whirls around to face me. "You need me," he blurts out so fast that I can barely understand him. Second and I stare at him with ice cold eyes.

"A turncoat rat like you? I think not," I say calmly. Though both Second and I remain passive and unmoving, Actaeon starts backing away from us, stumbling through the fresh snow as he holds up his hands to cover his face. I sniff in disdain at his groveling. I would have had more respect for him if he had kept up the act until the end.

"No! You need me. You do! You're outnumbered and you know it! Y-you'll need me if it comes to a fight! You'll need me! You will!" he screeches, spit flying from his mouth. When he receives no reaction from either of us, he points a gnarled finger at me in fury, narrowing his red eyes into slits. "You were going to betray me too! I _heard_ you! I heard you tell him that you weren't going to pay. You weren't going to keep your word either."

"I never claimed to be honest," I say simply. "It's not my style, and you should know me well enough by now to know that I can't be trusted. If you shake hands with the devil, you're going to get burned." I pivot on my heels and turn away, leaving both Second and Actaeon behind me as I walk imperiously through the snow. "Kill him."

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**A/N:** Thank you for all of the support so far, everyone! I appreciate the encouraging reviews so much, especially in response to the more evil characters (which I _so_ enjoy writing). I had originally planned to lead Maria to Middlebury first and have her cause some damage, but in the end decided it was pointless bloodshed that would only serve to make the story longer and probably more depressing. You're welcome. Next chapter: Maria stops in for a spot of tea and a plateful of cookies.


	7. Some Say Fire

**Some Say Fire**

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"No. Absolutely not, Emmett. No. I'm not going to tell you again. Completely out of the question. No."

Emmett brushes off Edward's stern refusal as if he is deaf in both ears. He turns away from the snowy landscape and drops into the dramatic posture of a theater-actor, gesticulating wildly with his hands. "Let me just set the scene for you _one_ more time: Maria steps into the yard, where all seven of us are waiting for her, ready for war." His voice drops significantly. "All is quiet. All is calm. Tension is rippling in the air. Emotions are riding high. Anything could happen. No one knows what's next. Then BOOM —_out of nowhere_— a snowball hits her right in the goddamn face."

Edward cocks his head thoughtfully. "Well, I guess when you put it that way... _No_."

Rosalie presses her palm against the frosted windowpane. "I can't believe you were right, Alice. It's so strange. "

Outside the window, snowflakes are falling in a steady, unbreakable curtain, creating layer upon layer of icy white. In less an hour, the grass has been completely buried, and the tarp covering the barebones of the addition on the house managed to sag and tear, spilling snow and water all over the foundation. And still, the snow keeps falling, covering the branches of still-green leaves in the willow out back and freezing Esme's flower beds into perfect, ice-covered gardens. The freak storm is such an anomaly that none of us can seem to look away from it, standing shoulder-to-shoulder in front of the picture windows with mirrored looks of confusion.

Even I, who had clearly seen this in my visions, can't help but be amazed. No matter how many times I see the future come true, there's always a degree of uncertainty when it comes to the weird ones; the visions that make no sense. Even though I knew what I had seen was snow, there was still a part of me that thought it might be soapsuds or cotton or something entirely unrelated to the burgeoning blizzard outside the living room window. "I can't believe I was right either, to be honest," I whisper to Jasper, who gives me a faint smile.

He was the first one to notice the snow, and he has been eerily quiet and thoughtful ever since. Though he says nothing, I know he thinks the storm is an omen; the timing of this blizzard is far too coincidental to have no meaning.

Edward, artistic even during times like these, calmly recites Robert Frost while the rest of continue to stare out the window. "Some say the world will end in fire, some say ice. From what I've tasted of desire, I hold with those who favor fire." Outside, an icicle breaks off the porch eves and shatters against the frozen wood, sending daggers of crystal flying. The cracking sound is loud enough to make all of us flinch. "But if I had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate to say that for destruction, ice is also great, and would suffice."

"Dude," Emmett says flatly. "That's so not funny right now."

"I highly doubt the end of the world is upon us," Carlisle says, finally exiting his study to join us. He claps a hand on Emmett's back. "And even if it were, son, I don't think you'd have much to worry about. It _is_ odd though, isn't it? I turned on the radio just now, and the news stations are all abuzz about it. South of us, everywhere between here and Lethbridge is snowed in, but it hasn't hit anywhere north of us yet. The roads are a mess, too. More than a few overturned cars, and a bus stuck in a ditch about ten miles out of here."

Jasper's concentration finally breaks, though he doesn't look away from the window. "Any information on Maria?"

"Rémy, an old acquaintance of mine living in New Orleans, informed me that Maria recently suffered a run-in with the Volturi. They took away her territory."

Jasper, who not only respectfully fears the Volturi, but also knows just how ruthless Maria can be when it comes to her territory, takes in this information with a brief nod and a grim sort of smile. "The one thing she actually cares about," he says plainly. "Smart of them." But his face narrows into the smooth, calculating expression he usually only wears during a game of chess. He is anticipating her moves and strategizing accordingly. If what he said was the truth — if Maria had never cared about him, or anyone else, then what was she doing here. What did she want?

"So, what, then? She needs a place to crash?" Emmett laughs. "No room at the inn?"

Carlisle smiles gently. "Undoubtedly we'll find out what she wants when she gets close enough. Edward can give us a glimpse into her true intentions, no matter what she might say." He turns to me. "Do we have anything to worry about, Alice?"

A vision of Maria filters back to me, standing beside a snowy oak tree with Jasper while the rest of us look on. The image of her, and her close vicinity to Jasper actually startles me. Even soaking wet with her hair hanging around her shoulders in limp curls, she is formidably beautiful, she is a perfect picture of everything that I am not. My eyebrows are delicate and slanting, hers are thick and heavily arched. My lips are naturally crimson and shaped like cupid's-bow, and hers are blood-red and outrageously, wildly full. My body is slight and petite, hers is curved like an hourglass. And even though Jasper looks absolutely livid standing there while she whispers at him, the sight of her terrible beauty makes my stomach quiver.

Among the rest of us, standing between Carlisle and Emmett, there is another strange vampire — her companion: a male with long dark hair and a carefully blank expression. He seems relaxed and almost pleasant, casually ignoring the fact that Emmett's tremendous bulk is looming over him like an angry skyscraper. The air is tense, but not with danger. Jasper's vicious fury is radiating through all of us, burning in my chest like fire.

"No danger," I answer instantly, glancing at Jasper out of the corner of my eye. "There are two of them, Maria and a male, and they only want to talk."

_For now_, I think, but don't say. The snow was only one part of my vision. The rest is shaky, but still there in the background of my consciousness: a burning fire, a trail of blood. These things have yet to come to pass, but now that at least a portion of it has happened, I am even more apprehensive about what they could mean. What is burning? Who is bleeding? Why am I alone? But there are no solid answers yet. Not until Maria steps through the line of pine trees surrounding our now-snowy yard, and makes the first of her inevitable decisions.

***

Jasper. I'm about to see Jasper again. I place a hand on my chest to smother the burn of anxiety. I have no backup plan, and no other options. If I can't pull this off, I will lose absolutely everything. I wet my lips, and struggle to breathe at an even pace. The last thing I need right now is Second berating me for a lack of emotional control. The two of us stride through a sparse white forest of pine and stray oaks, crunching over the snow as quietly as a pair of ghosts. Jasper's cedar scent is stronger than ever here, saturating every tree branch and every icy leaf, only slightly muffled by the snow. I can only assume that this is intentional. He, of all people, should know the importance of staking a claim on a territory. When I catch a glimpse of grey-blue paint through the curtain of snowflakes, I abruptly stop and grab Second's arm. A house — a very large, very human-looking house that positively reeks of the cool, spicy-sweet smell of our kind.

"This is it. They're right over that ridge," I say in a voice that sounds too quick and too high. I brush my curls forward to fall over my shoulders, and straighten the neckline of my soaking wet dress, fluffing up the limp layers of lace. Most of the makeup I had on earlier surely washed off in the snow by now, so I run two fingers beneath my eyes to wipe away the excess of eyeliner and mascara and blot my lips on the back of my hand to assure myself that I still have at least a bit of lipstick on. "How do I look?"

Second stares at me. "Desperate."

I ignore that. "We're not to go in with our guns blazing, do you understand?" I say primly. "We're outnumbered and that means we have to strategize. Take a survey of what and who we're dealing with before we make any sort of move. We will be congenial. We will be polite. We will be smiling. I know you can be charming when the occasion calls for it— I don't want even a glimmer of your normal depravity to show through. Not even a hint, do you understand me?"

His lips curve up into a wicked smirk. "I will be the very definition of angelic."

"Don't even joke. This is serious. Do you want to see me burned?" I demand. He raises an eyebrow as if to ponder this, and I huff out an insulted breath. "Nevermind."

Second laughs. "I'm not exactly new to this, darling. I can handle myself just fine." His mocking tone provokes a glare from me, but I do believe him. Second, despite his many failings, can be utterly enchanting when he wanted to be. Jasper, of course, holds the crown for flawless manipulation due to his incredible talent... but Second, despite his lack of emotion-manipulating ability, is practically a professional philanderer. Not that I would ever allow him to behave that way unless I could reap some sort of benefit from it.

"And you remember your task? With his mate?"

He rolls his eyes. "You've only told me about a thousand times. Let's just get this over with."

I don't pause to take a deep breath or gather myself, but merely plow through the trees in front of him, punching through the snow with new determination. The grey-blue house feels empty, and as we approach I realize that this is because the coven is gathered outside in the yard, watching for us. When we finally descend down a hill and come out to the last line of trees, I can see figures standing in the snow. Seven figures, to be exact, standing in a casual yet clearly strategized formation. I recognize Jasper's hand in this; a military move that displays strength, not aggression. The front line is a staggered mix of male and female, and the largest vampire of the coven, a huge, hulking beast with a thatch of dark brown curls, stands at the back.

My eyes fall on Jasper first, immediately, and I feel a cold jolt in my stomach at the absolute void of expression — no emotion, no reaction, no surprise. Nothing. I could be anyone to him, anyone at all. I am desperate to take in the details of his face, but it's too hard at first, too painful, like placing a hand on a hot stove and holding it there until the skin blisters. Instead, my eyes wander over the others, this new yellow-eyed coven that he chose over me. Three males, three females, nothing impressive or outwardly special about any of them. All good-looking, all dressed in stylish human apparel. Except for Jasper, there are all wearing the same, flat expression: a narrow-eyed, thin-lipped look that clearly says "go away." I have never felt so unwelcome in my life.

"Friendly," Second mutters, so quietly that only I can hear him.

I know that I can't just stand here at the edge of their yard, uninvited, without saying anything, so I lock my jaw in determination and saunter forward with Second at my side. This has to work. It has to. If I can't successfully worm my way back into Jasper's life, I will never get my territory back. I will have nothing. I will _be_ nothing. I swallow a couple of times, trying to work down the knot in my throat, and then smile — a hard, glittery smile that doesn't reach my eyes. "Jasper. It's... it's just so wonderful to see you again."

I fully expected this phrase to be a lie, but it isn't. For so many years now, my only image of Jasper had been in the watery pictures that memories provide — nothing of the details that made him _him_. I hadn't been able to recall the exact angle of his eyebrows, just the two dark slashes of color beneath a tousle of blonde hair. And of the hair itself, I remembered nothing save a bland impression, not these different shades of honey-gold and platinum thrown together into a messy, yet perfect arrangement that falls to the tops of his ears and across his forehead. The eyes are different though, startlingly different, and not just the strange amber color of their irises. They make him look like a completely different creature, a stranger, someone I no longer know.

"Maria," he says simply.

_How many times have I heard him say my name?_ I wonder, listening to that calm southern drawl that always seemed to draw out the middle syllable just a fraction too long. Surely hundreds, maybe thousands. Enough that the sound of it rolling off his tongue isn't even remotely foreign to me, but instead horribly familiar and disturbing coming out of the mouth of this new Jasper — as if the spirit of the man I once knew had possessed this yellow-eyed stranger's body.

A woman with short, jet-black hair is standing next to him, her tiny hand engulfed in his. I realize with an ugly whip of jealousy that this is her: the slut he replaced me with, the one we've been tracking. I want to look at her so badly that my eyes burn, but I keep my gaze on Jasper and the others, glancing at her only out of my peripheral. I can see that she is prettier than I'd hoped, but not a great beauty. Too slight, too delicate, nowhere near on my level of rippling sensuality. I can feel her staring at me. They are _all_ staring at me, silent, watching me with irritating, obvious distrust. One of them, the bronze-haired boy in the back, is gazing into my eyes so deeply that I feel uncomfortable, exposed.

"I don't mean to intrude, of course," I say softly, pleasantly, trying to ignore the seven hard faces before me. "This is a friendly visit. I assure you I mean no harm."

Still, they say nothing, though the oldest vampire in front — the patriarch, it looks like, shoots a wary glance at the bronze-haired one. He inclines his head a fraction of an inch and then drops it back down again; a nod. This strange display of submissiveness from the patriarch, something that contradicts every unwritten code of coven dynamics, immediately puts me on my guard. I am missing an essential piece of information.

I smile at Jasper, and gesture at the others. "You new coven, I presume?"

"Yes."

"May I trouble you for an introduction?"

His expression doesn't even flicker. "No."

My smile fades, and I have to struggle to retain my friendly posture in the face of such discourtesy. I can't say I expected Jasper to throw me a welcome party, but this is ridiculous. Years ago he wouldn't have _dared_ to be so rude to me. All class and manners, I formally, politely, draw my shoulders back and nod my head forward. "I am Maria Juana de Castile, formerly of Monterrey, Mexico. And this is my partner, Second—" I say, gesturing loosely. "We're not entirely sure where he came from." _Hell, perhaps,_ I think, smiling sweetly.

The curious bronze-haired one looks down with a faint sniff of humor, and the hairs on the back of my neck stand up in alarm. A part of my mind retreats backwards into the shadows, an automatic impulse to the feeling of stark violation and nakedness. There is definitely more to this coven than appears. Still, none of the others speak, though nearly all of them are eyeing Jasper now as well as me, maybe wondering why he is so unnervingly silent.

"You have a lovely home," I say, stretching for a topic, any topic, something to start a normal flow of conversation. "Very unassuming for a coven of your size. I often find that larger covens tend to err on the side of pretentiousness with their architecture—"

"What do you want, Maria?" Jasper interrupts coldly.

Again, his rudeness burns into me like a shovelful of coals, but I steel myself enough to simply look wounded. "I understand that we parted on... unfriendly terms," I say, my voice wavering. _As in, you left before I could murder you, and didn't even have the decency to say goodbye, you miserable, insensitive prick. _"I'd like to... atone for that. Recent losses have made me realize what's truly important to me. I want to rebuild the bridges I've burned."

"Is that why you attacked Peter and Charlotte?"

_Goddamn it._ How disgustingly like Peter to go running Jasper like a tattletale child who'd been bullied on the playground. My mouth drops open slightly, and I spin through a multitude of twists and lies, trying to come up with something besides the 'he started it' that first comes to mind. But Second speaks up before I can, looking embarrassed. "That unfortunate incident was my doing. I became territorial when Peter threatened us, and Maria, who knew I would be overpowered by a much more experienced vampire, was only defending my life."

Jasper's eyes cut over to him for only a split second. "You weren't mentioned."

Second smiles winningly. "I very rarely am."

Because I can feel the situation sliding out of my grasp, I redouble my efforts at looking pitiful and shamefaced. I do everything I've seen pleading humans do before I feed on them: the huge eyes, the trembling lower lip, the heaving chest, the quavering voice. I have never debased myself to this level before, and I have a terrible impulse to laugh out loud at the sheer absurdity of my expression. "I'm here to ask for your forgiveness, Jasper. I know that I have done nothing to earn your trust, but I hope you will allow me to show you that I have changed."

***

Lies, all lies. But I find it curious, absolutely perplexing, that she would profess these lies to me: the one who she _knows_ will never believe her. She can't pretend to feel anything around me, let alone something as abstract to her as regret. This display of maudlin whimpering can't possibly be for my benefit. She and I are both well aware that she hasn't changed. That she _can't_ change. Not ever. Changing takes humility, the grace to admit that something about you isn't right. And Maria considers herself nothing if not infallible. To her, the rest of the world has always been the oddity — Maria herself is the sanity among the madness.

The only answer I can theorize is that she isn't trying to fool to me at all — she's trying to fool to the Cullens. She is banking on my private nature, and my stoic detachment from those around me. Always a loner, always an outsider, I had never bonded with anyone save Peter while I was in her service; she has no reason to believe that I would choose to do so now. By playing victim, she hopes to alienate me from the Cullens, to drive me out of their ranks so that I have no choice but to crawl back to her. I almost smile. She doesn't know me like she thinks she knows me. Falling in love with Alice had changed every terrible part of me, including the need to keep others at arms length. And after only two years of living together as a family, the Cullens know me better than she _ever_ did.

She stares at my family now with a flashy, well-practiced smile, and the posture of someone who _wasn't_ just coldly shut down and all but slapped by her former soldier. Her expression is all excitement and hope, not a hint of indignation. "I'd address you all by name, but..."

Carlisle glances at me uncertainly, and when I don't answer he clears his throat. "I'm Carlisle Cullen, and this," he gestures back to us," is my family. My wife, Esme. Our sons, Edward and Emmett, and our daughter, Rosalie. You already know Jasper, of course, and—"

He trails off, and all eyes turn to Alice, who has everyone reason to feel threatened and unreasonable right now. Outwardly she remains perfectly composed under Maria's keenly interested gaze. Only I can feel what's actually emanating from her: the same suspicion and jittery unease as everyone else in our family, along with a veil of hatred and jealousy so black that I can barely recognize her sunny aura. As a mark of true grace and class though, she stares down her enemy with nothing more than a slight incline of her head. "Alice."

"Alice," Maria repeats, staring at her with gleaming ruby-red eyes. "It's a pleasure to meet you."

Alice doesn't smile. "I can't say I agree."

I very nearly grin at the look on Maria's face, and the one she calls Second laughs. "Lovely. We haven't even been here ten minutes, my dear, and you've already made an enemy," he says conversationally, glancing down at his wristwatch. "I do believe that's a new record. Unless you count the time you murdered the Spanish Ambassador's wife. But since he died immediately afterwards, I still hold that he may not have had the time to fully grasp the scope of his hatred. And you know, there _was_ that coven in Mexico City—"

Lips mashed together with restraint, Maria holds up a shaking hand to put an abrupt stop to Second's rambling debate. From the familiar fire in her eyes, I know is dangerously close to flying at the poor fellow with her claws outstretched and ripping his head off. With a deep, steeling breath, and an insincere smile, she turns back to face me, her eyes tight around the edges. "I wonder if I could have a moment alone with you, Jasper? To catch up, privately?"

Alice's hand clenches on mine like a vise, so hard that she could break my fingers off with just a bit more effort. She wants me to refuse — I can feel it radiating through her just as vividly as if she were screaming it out loud. But there is only one way to know what Maria truly wants. This ugly display of forced congeniality is fooling no one, least of all me, and it's getting very tiring very fast. The sooner we get down to what she actually wants from me, the sooner she can pack up her repulsiveness and leave. I squeeze Alice's hand once, drowning her in love and calm, and step forward to follow Maria away from the others.

She looks back over her shoulder as we walk. "I can see why you like her. She's feisty."

I don't want to discuss Alice with Maria, not in any capacity, but one thing needs to be made absolutely clear: "I don't like her. I love her."

Maria dismisses this unexpected sentiment with a nonchalant wave of her hand, though I can feel the hot lash of jealousy and hatred; a disturbing echo of Alice's aura from earlier, only much more malevolent and conniving. "You needn't worry," she continues airily, with a smirk rather than the simpering smile she had plastered on in front of the Cullens. "Second and I wouldn't _dare_ impose on you by asking to stay with your coven. We will find accommodations in town. A hotel perhaps, or one of those charming Bed and Breakfasts."

"You're not staying in Calgary," I say flatly.

Maria ignores this just as easily, sauntering beside me as if we're nothing more than two old friends meeting after a long absence, one step away from tucking her arm into mine and calling me 'darling'. She stops just out of earshot next to an snow-covered oak tree, and actually has the audacity to turn her back on the Cullens. Alone with just me now, she curves her lips up into an intimate smile, and her eyes blaze with life, a spark of voraciousness ambition that I recognize well. This is the real Maria. This is the demon I ran away from. Whatever she wants, she wants it badly, and she will stop at absolutely nothing to get it.

"I understand your concern, of course," she says with a mischievous raise of her eyebrows. "But you know as well as I do that I can be the very epitome of discretion. The humans of Calgary will never even know that we're here, and if Second and I do choose to feed within the city limits, we will dispose of the carcasses quietly. A nice pair of children, perhaps, all pink-cheeked and warm from making angels in the snow."

The talk of feeding and carcasses and murdering children causes something very, very dark to rise up within me. "You're not staying in Calgary."

She casts a pointed glance back at the Cullens, at Alice. "Unless of course you'd rather I join you and your _mate_ in hunting chipmunks?

The icy shell around me finally cracks to reveal a terrifying, murderous rage. Nothing in my face or posture changes, but the air around us crackles with sudden danger, splashing over Maria like a bucket of ice water. I watch her expression change from sly antagonism to outright fear in an instant, and she only has time to let out a tiny gasp before I slam her against the oak tree by the throat, my hand nearly crushing her larynx. Snow falls from the upper branches, dusting us both in a thin layer of white. For a moment, I say nothing, then, calmly: "You're not staying in Calgary."

Maria screws her mouth up in hatred, then speaks through clenched teeth. "Perhaps this is a bad time. I can see now that I've caught you off-guard." Livid, displaying a half-snarl-half-grin like a gruesome painted doll, she pries my fingers from her throat and hits the snow again hard when I release her. Full of spite, she brushes her dress off, and starts stalking back toward the others, practically kicking the snow out of her way. "I'll come back tomorrow when you're prepared to discuss things like a man instead of a stuck-up, spoiled little child. Second?"

Her puppy-dog man-whore raises an eyebrow, but does not come running, and when she turns to yell for him again, I block her path. No games, no pretenses. I may have let her walk all over me in the past, but those days are long over. I make a firm slashing motion with my hand, and stare her dead in the eyes. "I have nothing to discuss with you, Maria. You are _not_ forgiven, nor will you ever be. If you come back tomorrow, the next day, or even a century from now, you still won't be forgiven. And whatever it is you're after, you're not going to get it. Not from me."

"I'll take the risk," she spits out. "Second!" she screams, finally losing her cool. He slowly makes his way over to us, and winces at her glittering eyes as if he's about to be beaten. Maria gathers up her skirt in a huffy, undignified manner, and glares back up at me challengingly. "Please convey my apologies to your coven for leaving so abruptly," she snaps. "How _entirely_ rude of me. And do me a favor and grow the hell up before tomorrow, will you? I wouldn't want to _waste_ anyone's _time_."

* * *

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**A/N:** Huffy little thing, isn't she? :) I'm not certain if Maria's full name was ever given in the series. If it was, feel free to correct me and I'll change it. As of now, I decided to name her after Juana I of Castile, who a Spanish princess known as Juana la Loca... or, Juana 'the mad,' because she was literally insane. She once spent 36 hours outside the castle gates in the dead of winter, screaming in rage because her husband decided to leave her. Somehow it seemed fitting.

Next chapter: Maria tells Jasper what she's "really" after.


	8. Plan B

**Plan B**

**.**

**.**

**.**

* * *

Jasper walks back to us as Maria walks away, and I breathe an audible sigh of relief when his hand automatically finds mine. In the short time span that he was out of reach, I must have checked his decisions probably a thousand times. Each one reflected the same unswerving choice: he was mine, and he always would be. His face is calm again now; the monster who strangled Maria against a tree trunk is carefully concealed. But his grip is too strong against the fine bones of my hand; just a small amount of pressure away from crushing my palm to dust. I keep my silence about it, but when he sees me biting my lip, he loosens his grasp immediately. "Sorry."

If Carlisle is disturbed by Jasper's display of violence — the first visible sign that Jasper had once lived a very different lifestyle from the rest of us, he doesn't show it. "What did she want?"

Jasper lifts a shoulder in nonchalance. "She said she'd come back tomorrow when I was prepared to discuss things like a man."

"As opposed to what?" Emmett laughs. "A gopher?"

Because of the way he and Edward look at each other, I'm certain that this is some sort of male-bonding joke between them. Even Jasper's face relaxes a bit, the corners of his eyes crinkling as he shrugs again. "Apparently she thought my refusal to listen to her was childish."

"It was," Rosalie snaps, impatient as always. She turns to Edward with a hand on her hip, banishing the smile on his face with a glare. "Can we trust this woman or not?"

"Definitely not," Edward says firmly. "Jasper was right not to listen — all that talk of forgiveness and re-building bridges was a lie. She was trying to lure us into a false sense of security so that we'd turn against Jasper. That was all on the fly, too. Every word of it. They only recently discovered that there were seven of us. There was a third member in their party who was keeping that information from them, but they killed him about an hour before they showed up here. Until that point, they were planning on making a much more violent entrance."

Emmett grins widely. "So there _will_ be a fight."

Carlisle's mouth twitches, but he has the grace not to laugh. "Unless we can outsmart her," he offers tactfully. "At this point we know more than she does. Our combined gifts could actually lure _her_ into a false sense of security, by allowing us to tell her exactly what she's hoping to hear. With Jasper manipulating her emotions, Alice watching her future decisions, and Edward reading her mind, she's at an extreme disadvantage."

"What about the male? Second?" I ask, suddenly realizing that we left him out of the equation. Everyone else looks up at Edward curiously, even Jasper.

"Him, I trust even _less_," Edward answers quietly. He holds a hand up to let the snowflakes gather in his palm. "This blizzard is not a freak of nature, it's his _talent_. He can cause snow, hail, lightning, rain, increases and decreases in temperature... basically anything weather-related at all. He fabricated this storm just south of the Canadian border and kept building it reached blizzard level, unleashing it as soon as he entered the valley. That's why the snow isn't going anywhere north of here. It stays where he stays."

"That's typical of Maria," Jasper explains. "She prefers to keep only the soldiers who display exceptional talents. Myself, Kade Lykes with his extraordinary sense of smell, and now—" he breaks off mid-sentence, looking deep in thought. His eyes move to Edward, and an unspoken question is asked, answered with a subtle nod.

"What is it?" I ask instantly, following the exchange.

Jasper takes a moment to answer. "Do you remember how hard it was raining when Maria's soldiers cornered us in that warehouse in Beaumont? Like a hurricane, from out of nowhere. Sheets of it, flooding the streets. With so much standing water and such a high level of sound distortion, it was almost impossible to track the other vampires, even when we realized they were there. Likewise, it's just as difficult to track someone through the snow once a fresh layer has covered the trail. If this Second is manipulating the weather, it could be to cover their tracks."

"But why would they need that sort of cover?" Carlisle asks. "We already know that they're here. Are they planning to ambush us tomorrow? Alice?"

In my mind, I skip ahead to tomorrow, and a crystal clear image reflects back at me: both Maria and Second walking up to the house as casually as if they were old friends. If this was their idea of an ambush, they certainly weren't any good at it. But instead of emptying back into the present as I normally do, I linger a short moment, going further ahead. The vague images from before are now slightly more solid. Something is burning — huge leaping flames tear at a sky black with smoke; it's hot against my face, a sudden brightness against my eyes like an explosion. And I see the trail of blood again, this time much more vividly, leading to... leading to...

"Alice?"

I come back to the present as instantly as if someone had flicked a switch. "No. No ambush." I pause a moment, already aware of how much the Cullens will hate this next part. "But... it looks as though they're going to kill at least one human while they're here. I keep seeing a trail of blood in the snow. A lot of blood."

Esme presses her lips together, already heartbroken over whatever nameless human would lose their life tonight. "I suppose we can't expect them to follow our diet."

With an amount of affection and love that makes me smile, Carlisle kisses her temple. "We can't change the whole world, love. Only ourselves."

They walk back to the house together through the knee-deep snow, followed by an arguing Emmett and Rosalie. Jasper doesn't even notice them leave; he is staring off into the middle distance, expressionless again. Edward stays behind a moment longer, and I can tell by the inquisitive look in his eyes that he wants to talk to me about my vision, but instead he tilts his head toward Jasper's blank expression — the subtle Edward-way of saying, "He needs you." _My pleasure_, I think mischievously_. And if you don't see us for awhile and hear strange noises coming from the yard, do __not__ come back outside._

"Thanks for the warning," he says dryly, shuddering with an appropriate amount of disgust, but I notice that he walks back toward the house a little faster than necessary. After spending most of his vampire life in a houseful of happy, healthy, very enthusiastic couples, Edward has learned that these kinds of threats are very rarely jokes.

When Edward disappears through the front door and snaps it shut behind him, I tug on Jasper's hand and pull him to a sitting position beside me in the snow. He silently obliges, and when I lay flat on my back staring up at the white sky, he does too. The snow is falling so thickly that it's hard to differentiate the separate flakes until they rest against my cheeks, soft and cool as feathers. Updrafts ribbon through make it an eddying dance, pulling the snowflakes into swirls of movement against the white. The silence is so heavy that it somehow feels tangible. "Pretty, isn't it?" I say softly, turning to curl myself against Jasper's shoulder. "Despite where it might have come from."

He is quiet for a long moment, then sighs. "I'm so sorry, Alice."

"For what?"

He brushes the snowflakes from my eyelashes with his thumb, and lets his hand rest against the side of my face. "It seems like no matter where we go, I end up ruining things for you."

Pain and guilt are both evident in his eyes, writhing there behind a mess of other emotions that he's struggling with. But he is shielding me from every particle of it, keeping a careful watch on his own wounded aura to make sure that it doesn't bleed into mine. I smile sadly, and kiss him on the lips, as soft and cool as a snowflake. My solemn, watchful Jasper, still protecting me, even when his own heart needs shelter from the storm. "There's no such thing as a 'happily ever after,' Jazz. I don't expect things to be perfect."

"You deserve—"

I cut him off with a sharp shake of my head. "_Don't_ tell me what I deserve again. Please. I'm well aware of what I what I'm worth, and what I _deserve_ is to be with the man I love." I move so that I'm half on top of him, my leg curved around his, and smile at his serious expression. "And holy hell, look at that, what a coincidence— it just so happens to be you."

He rests his hands on my hips, and holds me as if I'm made of glass. "I don't think I'll ever understand why."

I pretend to think about it. "Well, you _are_ phenomenal in bed."

For a moment, his expression remains stubbornly solemn. Then, ever so slightly, the left corner of his mouth slides up into a faint smirk, and I nearly laugh. Men. So predictable. The whole world could be falling apart, but one little compliment about their sexual prowess and suddenly they're all smirks, smiles, and confidence. The pressure in his grip changes, and he's no longer holding me as if I'm breakable, but as if he's two seconds away from ravaging me right here in the yard. "Is that so?" he asks quietly, nonchalantly.

"If I remember right, yes. But honestly, my memory is a little fuzzy. You might have to help me out."

Finally, he laughs, and when he pulls me down to him, I feel like a small victory has been won. This is why Jasper and I work well together, no matter what people might think about our opposite natures. I am the light to his darkness, and he is the reality to my world of future dreams and uncertainties. I need him, and he needs me; each of our downfalls filled by the presence of a perfectly matching piece — a lover who embodies everything we lack. Separately we can survive, and have before, albeit as less-than what we could be with each other. But together, together we are unstoppable.

***

The downtown area of Calgary is pristinely white, quaint, and packed full of insipid scarf-wearing humans who feel three feet of summer snow is somehow _magical_. Traffic has come to a complete halt, and people are parading the empty streets jovially, babbling about divine-hands and miracles and other childish things that don't exist. Newspaper reporters are out in abundance, taking notes through chattering teeth as they talk to the man who's car spun out in the intersection and the family toting armfuls of canned foods and blankets. Second can barely keep himself from smirking when an old woman refers to the snow as an 'act of God.'

Normally the sheer absurdity of it all would have put me in high spirits, but things with Jasper had not gone as planned, and not even the sight of stupid humans stumbling through the snow like drunkards could cheer me up. As Second predicted, my emotions had ruled, and a flawlessly thought out strategy had been ruined. My plan had been crafted for the old Jasper: the one who lived for war and battle, the one who would have jumped at a chance to leave a sleepy life of animal-feasting and passivity behind. The new Jasper, the one with a petite little mate, and happy little coven of lemmings, had simply looked at me like I was insane.

When Second and I reserve a hotel room for the rest of the week, and enter the dingy, human-reeking accommodations, I glumly think that things could possibly get any worse. Then Second removes his traveling coat, pats the empty pockets, and realizes that we've been robbed. _Robbed_.

Actaeon got the last laugh after all, however loudly he might have screamed when Second butchered him and burned him to ash. The thieving little backstabber had lifted his withheld payment off us like a professional cat-burglar, probably stuffing it in the pockets of his filthy, flea-infested trenchcoat — which Second unfortunately ignited along with the rest of him. $750,000. Gone. Absolutely irate, I retreat to the corner of the hotel room and stand there with my arms crossed, glowering at Second, who actually has the audacity to laugh at this mishap.

"Shut up."

He titters like a schoolgirl. "Oh, come on now. How was I supposed to know the old miser pickpocketed us?"

"I said shut up," I snarl. "Just shut up. Don't talk to me."

Second shakes his head fondly. "I wouldn't have thought he had it in him, to be honest. The old man had guts— you have to admit it. Can you imagine the kind of courage it would take to steal from a heartless shrew like you?" He lifts his hands in surrender, an annoying gesture that makes me feel like ripping his arms off and throwing them out the window. "So, we're short $750,000. Big deal. We'll make it back in no time once this is all over with."

My upper lip curls, and I turn away from him spitefully. Undoubtedly the Volturi had already drained my bank accounts and liquidated my assets as punishment, thanks to the brilliant Volturi accounting team and sundry illegal connections in the financial world. With the Louisiana coven traipsing their muddy French shoes all over my Monterrey mansion, selling off my priceless antique furniture and taking over my merchant and property clientele, I will be penniless in days. I clutch a hand to my stomach, feeling suddenly and violently ill.

Second reclines on the bed easily, folding his arms behind his head. "My _god,_ but today was fun, wasn't it?" he asks, ignoring my murderous look. "I truly can't wait for tomorrow— I think I'll go for the blonde if the little one doesn't bite. I bet she's a real wildcat. And you! Oh, you were priceless, my dear. You almost had _me_ convinced." He pauses with a smirk. "Except for the end there, that got a bit shaky. You could have done without the temper tantrum."

I sniff. I expected him to gloat much sooner than this, to be honest. He must feel sorry for me, or a laughing 'I told you so' would have been the first thing out of his mouth. Sorry because I was so rudely rebuffed by Jasper; sorry because he chose another woman so obviously different from me; sorry because I couldn't compete with something I didn't understand. Not one for pity, I turn away from Second's prying gaze and study the ugly hotel carpet. _Why her? What did Jasper see in her? What was so necessary and special that he couldn't walk away without a backwards glance — the way he walked away from me?_ "Do you think he loves her? The elf?"

"Didn't he say that he did?" Second asks uncertainly. He moves his arms out from beneath his head and holds them awkwardly at his chest, no longer cocky or relaxed, but distinctly uncomfortable. I look away again. This is not familiar territory with us; we do not discuss love, feelings, or anything that even remotely resembles affection.

"People say a lot of things they don't mean."

"Like you, for instance?" he asks innocently, and I glare. He shrugs. "Well, he's been with her for awhile now, hasn't he? At least three years that we know about, maybe even longer than that. So, longevity. That says something. And I'm just going to throw a guess out there and say that he's probably eating animals for her too. That says even more. Can you imagine giving up humans? Living off pigeons and dogs?" He mimes a dry heave. "I don't care how good the sex is— I will _not_ be feeding on vermin at any point in the future, and certainly not in honor of some trollop."

As much as I hate to admit it, I know he's right. Jasper wouldn't do these things —_no one_ would do these things— unless they were in love. This realization sinks into my stomach like led. Not because _I_ love Jasper, or really feel anything for him at all other than a vague sense of familiar lust, but because... he didn't choose me. Jasper, cold, emotionless, stone-faced Jasper, had finally fallen in love, and it wasn't with me. Why was I not worthy of being loved? How did I fall short? I created him, I trained him, I showed him how to fight, how to hunt, how to live. And yet, he ran away from me and straight into the arms of someone else, loyalty be damned.

"So, that's a yes, then?" I demand, ignoring Second's look of discomfort. "You think he loves her?" I put my hands on my hips. "How much?"

He groans audibly, and covers his face with his arm. "I can't believe we're seriously having this conversation right now. I don't know, okay? I have no idea. Maybe tomorrow after Jasper and I exchange friendship bracelets and French-braid each other's hair, we'll gossip about it over cocktails. Why does it even matter?"

"Because, you _cretin_," I snap, "I need to know how far he'll go. I need to know how much she's worth to him. Obviously Plan A isn't going to work."

Second sighs and sits up straight on the bed, fully serious now. "Okay, look. Let's be honest with ourselves. We've got nothing to lose. We've got nothing to lose, and in case you haven't noticed," he nods at the clock next to the bed, "we're running out of time. So whatever you need to do, do it. No matter what the risk. If it pans out, great. If not, we'll work around it. But we can't just sit here and keep our fingers crossed, hoping for a miracle."

"Plan B, then," I say after a moment, and he nods in agreement.

Plan B meant burning a bridge for good. _There will be no going back after this_, I think, pulling back the curtains to look out at the frosty streets below. _But this is Jasper's choice, not mine_. He of all people should know the consequences for his actions; he had watched me murder others for far less than this. He left me. He left me, and he started a new life with a new mate, without even giving me the dignity of a goodbye. And now, as I lower myself to seek his help, he treats me as if _I_ were the one who had wronged _him_. As if I were the villain of this story — me, the one who stood waiting on a dance floor while he scampered off and chased some other slut.

Below the hotel window, a mother toting two young girls is distracted and hassled, trying to balance an armful of packages and the two little hands clutched within hers. They are making their way through the snow at a very slow place, slipping every few feet and nearly dropping the packages. Even from a distance, I can see the gentle pulse of a heartbeat in each throat, ticking down my remaining seconds the same way as the clock on the bedside table. I no longer had the time for games and manipulation. My last resort, desperate measure Plan B, was now the only option.

"Where are you going?" Second asks, glancing up as I cross the room.

"Hunting."

* * *

.

.

.

**A/N: **Apparently "Plan B" is also the name of some sort of birth control contraceptive backup thing. I was completely unaware of this when I wrote the chapter, but when I found out I was so amused that I just went ahead and kept the title as is. Welcome to the inside joke.

In completely unrelated (but equally exciting) news: as of four days ago, I am officially a paid author with a publishing contract. How tremendously awesome is that? :D I literally screamed when I found out and then proceeded to go into hysterics so bad that I had to breathe into a paper bag. _So_ professional.


	9. A Throw of the Dice

**A Throw of the Dice**

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**.**

* * *

We approach the house again at dawn, while the icy shadows of night are still clinging to the deeper parts of the forest. After a full night of snowfall, Second had more than doubled the amount of white on the ground, throwing several feet of fresh powder onto an already hard-packed surface. The snow is falling much thicker now, white-washing everything in sight and muffling every sound and every smell. I have to almost crawl out of every footstep (heels weren't exactly a stellar fashion choice this morning), and the hem of my dress is soaked clear through. Barely visible through the snowflakes, a white-covered roof appears in the distance, with a quaint stream of smoke rising out of a fireplace that our kind couldn't possibly deem necessary; some cheap attempt to act like warm-blooded humans in the face of a burgeoning storm.

I stop just on the edge of the bordering woods, and hand Second a canvas knapsack. "Don't mess this up," I tell him plainly.

He shoulders the knapsack and gives me a cold, enigmatic smile. "Oh, I won't."

We continue down the hill and into the open, slower than usual because of a veritable wall of snow blocking our path. Unlike yesterday, the coven members appear casual and unconcerned, loosely gathered around the yard in groups of two and three. Jasper is the only one whose posture remains stiff and guarded, watching me with unblinkingly with those creepy yellow eyes. His hand is once again firmly linked with his mate's, both of them dressed in stylish winter attire: cashmere sweaters, wool coats, perfectly coordinating scarves. I note critically that despite the dreadful weather, the coven has yet to invite me into their home, and that the front door is firmly shut today, too. I fight off a scowl, well aware that this means another ruined hairdo and another uncomfortably wet dress. Uptight, condescending, _sycophants_ — god forbid they allow me to sit on their sofa.

"Hello again," I say pleasantly, as if we are all old, familiar friends. "I see we meet on friendlier terms this morning, and for that I am glad." I direct this observation to the blonde patriarch of the family, not Jasper, and consciously keep my gaze from falling on the bronze-haired one in the back. In my mind, beneath what I say out loud on the surface, I begin to recite romantic poems in all the languages that I know: Spanish, Italian, French, Russian. I recite them forwards, I recite them backwards, I mix-and-match the languages to form new double-meanings and rhythm. It could be nothing, certainly, but this isn't the time to take unnecessary risks, and I am rarely, if ever, wrong.

The patriarch nods his head in agreement, his tone all politeness and warmth. "However different our lifestyles may be, we are of the same kind, and that allows for a certain amount of kinship. My son may not welcome you as one of our own, but that is his choice. As for the rest of my family, we are neutral and willing to listen."

Considering his silence yesterday, I find it suspicious that he should want to play leader now. And I don't fail to notice that he calls Jasper his son. I look to Jasper to gauge his reaction to this potent word, but find him as composed and expressionless as always. I have never, in all my years, had the audacity to refer to my changeling newborns as my sons or daughters; I could barely even bring myself to refer to them by name. They are not my family. They are not even my _friends_. A coven, or in my case — an army, was not a relationship. It was a contract built upon the usefulness of each member. A business. This animal-eating coven's idea of a family atmosphere is absurd and repulsive, and Jasper is a fool for buying into it.

And as for the patriarch's other sentiments... although nothing in his face, posture, or tone hints at fabrication, I can sense a lie in the air: the same desperate sort of lie that humans gibber out when I am standing over them and they think they can somehow bargain their way out of death. I feel no more welcome today than I did yesterday, despite the coven's more relaxed appearance. Despite the foreign waves of calm and acceptance running through my veins. This is no more than a ploy. They are trying to spin me, just as I spun them the day before. The attempt is admirable, but hideously inadequate. No one ever manipulates a master.

I can feel the bronze-haired one staring at me, and immediately resume translating Mallarme into English, Spanish, Italian, Russian and back to the original French.

I smile politely. "As I said yesterday, my only intention in coming here is that I have something I'd like to discuss with Jasper. A private matter, but not an unfavorable one," I say, keeping my thoughts buried deep within me, hidden under layers and layers of defense.

_Une constellation, froide d'oubli et de desuetude, pas tant, qu'elle n'énumère, sur quelque surface vacante et supérieure le heurt successif, sidéralement, d'un compte total en formation__…. __Veillant, doutant, roulant, brillant et méditant, avant de s'arrêter, à quelque point dernier qui le sacre, Toute pensée émet un Coup de Dés. _The verses cycle through and I break them down into smaller portions and new meanings, not so much as flinching when the bronze-haired one narrows his eyes. Let him think I'm a romantic, let him think this is nothing but scorned love. Let him think I want to Jasper back. This is it. A throw of the dice. This is my moment. This is my first and most important move. Turning to Jasper, I hold out a hand for him — just as I had held out my hand on the dance floor of the Monterrey mansion, half a lifetime ago.

"Take a walk with me," I say, a command in the form of a suggestion. Jasper doesn't move or even flinch, and my stomach sinks at the disgusted look in his eyes — the same look I had seen the night he deserted. "Take a walk with me, _please_," I correct myself, almost painfully.

He keeps his gaze steady on mine, but I notice out of the corner of my eye that he relaxes the iron grip on his little mate's hand. The bronze-haired one notices too, and immediately shakes his head, "Jasper, this isn't a good—"

"I know," Jasper interrupts curtly.

Without any visible change in emotion, his hand disentangles itself and falls loosely to his side. His mate inhales a shaky breath at this decision, but she doesn't grab his hand back as I would have done. She merely touches his arm instead, and gently guides him to look at her. I suddenly hate this pixie-sized female with every seething particle of me — I hate her pert little nose and her shiny cap of black hair. I hate her delicate white hands. I hate her for the way that she affects Jasper, and the way that he so easily obeys her commands while casually ignoring mine. And most of all, I hate the fact that she isn't desperate right now as I would have been, but strong and encouraging, even in the face of she must know is dangerous.

"Jazz," she whispers. "You don't have to do this."

I expect him to brush her off, the way he would have brushed off me, but instead he turns to her tenderly. I watch in fascination, almost revulsion, as he touches her short black hair and strokes a thumb just below her ear, a movement that makes her eyes turn bright with emotion. "Yes, I do," he says simply, and I am shocked, stricken, at the amount of love in his eyes — feelings that I had never been able to draw out of him, emotions that no amount of my beauty and charm had ever managed to invoke. The unspoken words "_for you_" hang in the air like a hateful, mocking ghost — nothing he ever would have said to me.

Nothing I will ever from anyone, not in my hard-edged world of ambition and war.

Jasper turns back to me as if nothing important had just transpired. "Let's walk."

Because Second is watching — because everyone is watching, I keep my face a mask indifference. I curve my lips into a smile so bright it pains me. _C'est la vie_, what's done is done. I am who I am, and some things, the most fundamental things, can never ever change. My life isn't pointless, it is _driven. _There is always more for the taking: more territory, more blood, more power. More, always more, and I crave every shattered piece of it, every diminutive drop. I focus on what I know. I focus on what I can do. And block out all the rest. If there is anything further than this, if there is any other fate for me in the universe, I don't want it.

I walk into the snow-filled forest with Jasper at my side, and think of nothing but what is cold, logical, and real. He is meeting my challenge. He is moving his chess pieces across the board. The battle has begun.

***

_Leave it to Jasper to go all noble_, I think shakily, watching the broad line of his shoulders as he disappears into the forest with Maria. Leave it to Jasper to make me feel overwhelmed with both love and frustration, both anger and admiration. My husband, who always does what he thinks is best for me, even when I don't want him to. My husband, who never seems to comprehend that others are willing to fight with him, who never understands that he's not alone. Even with a family of six standing firmly behind him, he still goes off to face the enemy alone. _Overprotective fool._

"It's a matter of honor," Edward says simply, reading my thoughts. "Protecting you, however needless it may be, is not a task that he takes lightly or one that he will trust to anyone else. It is the constant backdrop to all of his thoughts... the reason behind all of his choices."

The one called Second, who Maria tactlessly left behind without so much as a goodbye, shifts slightly at Edward's assessment. All of us turn to scrutinize him, as if just now remembering his presence. In the shadow of Maria and the emotional turmoil that she represents, Second seems horribly insignificant. But when his scarlet eyes glance up at the snow-filled sky with a carefully blank expression, I remember that he isn't as inconsequential as Maria would lead us to believe. Whether he is acting on Maria's orders or not, Second built this snowstorm in July for a reason. A reason that, as of yet, remains unexplained.

He leans against the tree trunk next to me. "A bit awkward, isn't it?" he asks, nodding to the pathway that Jasper and Maria had taken. His mouth twists into a smile that seems bitter and a little jaded, as if this sort of offhanded rejection and abandonment happens to him so regularly that it's reached the point of amusement. "I realize that we're supposed to despise each other and whatnot, but you know, I can't help but feel that you and I have quite a great deal in common."

I raise an imperious eyebrow. "Such as?"

"Such as I hate this every bit as much as you do."

I look up at him in curiosity. As biased as I am about the entire situation, the amount of honest dejection on his face elicits a bit of sympathy. Jasper, years ago, had hinted at Maria's lack of loyalty as a lover: she expected absolute commitment but did not return the favor, and often slept with others as a form of punishment to 'keep her men in line.' I wonder now, staring at Second's handsome face, how many times he had had to watch her walk away with another man, how many times she had betrayed him. And with Maria calling all the shots and dictating his every move, there was little or nothing he could even do about it. Second was trapped, as Jasper was once trapped, so long ago. It seemed a very unhappy existence, his life.

"Jealous?" I ask, my voice a little kinder.

His eyes spark with a bit of humor, and he looks down at me. "Of course not. You?"

I smile. "Of course not."

"Ah, _denial_," he says fondly. "Another thing we have in common." Lowering his voice, he flashes me a smile that could have charmed a hundred women into falling in love with him. "At this rate we'll have no choice but to run away together and become lovers. Fiji? The Cayman Islands, perhaps?"

The idea is so preposterous that I laugh before I can help it, and my family, close enough to hear the entire conversation, glance over at the two of us warily. Edward, though, has a flat, mean expression on his face, challenging almost — a look of aggression that I'm not used to seeing in his eyes. He is staring at Second like a cockroach that he is about to stomp on and obliterate. Clearly, Second's friendly demeanor is not a reflection of his hidden thoughts. Edward knows something the rest of us do not, and whatever it is, it isn't favorable.

He raises his voice loudly and pointedly. "Have you been with Maria very long?"

Second takes this mercurial turn in stride, only inclining his head slightly at Edward's abrupt and unfriendly tone. "Perhaps four years now. Why do you ask?"

Edward inclines his head as well. "I just find it interesting that she doesn't know your name."

Dead silence settles over the snow-filled yard, broken up only by the mournful chirp of a cold little robin in the branches above us. If anything at all, Edward is impeccably honest, so I can only assume that he's telling the truth now — that Maria really and truly does not know this man's name. But why Edward would so maliciously draw attention to this fact, I'm not sure. It is very unlike him to go out of his way to insult someone who did not provoke him. A quick survey of the rest of the family shows me that the others are just as puzzled as I am; we are all wondering what Edward is seeing that the rest of us are blind to.

Again, Second appears unruffled by Edward's hostility, even intrigued by it. "She knows it, of course, but she prefers to call me Second," he says easily. He glances down at me, and smiles as if sharing a secret joke. "It's her idea of a pet name, I suppose."

"Alice and Jasper are married," Edward all but snarls. "So are Rosalie and Emmett."

"Oh?" Nothing on Second's face hints that he is even remotely insulted by the implications in those two declarations. He grins as if this is the most enjoyable news he's ever heard, and looks down at my left hand with new appreciation. "Well, congratulations. That's wonderful." His gaze lifts to Rosalie, who looks impossibly beautiful standing in the snow behind me — a marble-carved winter fairy with a waterfall of golden curls. His mouth twitches. "And congratulations to you as well," he adds politely. "Rosalie, is it? That's a lovely name."

Rosalie, ever the diplomat, takes in his appraisal with a narrowing of her golden eyes. "Go to hell."

Esme sighs. "Rose."

But Second holds up a hand to stop Esme's reprimand. "It's fine." He slouches against the tree trunk with a humorless laugh and mutters something under his breath that sounds like, "I'm used to the abuse." Again, I wonder what Maria has put him through, what she's made him do. I wonder if she's managed to break him, the way she broke Jasper, so long ago. Second is quiet for a long moment, then looks down at his hands, seemingly deliberate about keeping his eyes away from Edward's keen gaze. "Are you happy here, living like this?"

All of us look at Carlisle, who smiles with the first real warmth all morning. "Very happy," he says.

Second smiles faintly and brushes his knuckles against one another, nervously fiddling with the strap of the canvas knapsack slung over his shoulder. "Sometimes I just... wonder," he says in a voice that sounds slightly ashamed. "If I had been changed by someone else, in another place, in another time... I wonder what life might be like." The jaded smile from earlier returns, twisting his mouth into a half-grimace. "Jasper was lucky."

"Jasper was _smart_," I correct instantly. Let know one diminish the strength and courage it took for Jasper to walk away from Maria's bloody coven. It wasn't chance. It wasn't luck. The hand Jasper had been dealt in life was not a fortunate one, not at all. He had to fight his way out on his own, and even at that he hadn't been able to escape unscathed. There are scars there that go much deeper than the surface, wounds that will never be able to heal. Years later, he was _still_ struggling. More than anyone, even me, could ever know. "He got out on his own," I continue firmly. "He made a choice. He made the right choice."

Second finally lifts his head, and gives me a penetrating look that I don't understand. "I suppose he did."

I want to ask him if there's a double-meaning behind those words, and even more than that I want to ask Edward what's actually going on in this strange man's head. But even as I open my mouth I can feel a draining sensation in my mind; the present swirling down to vanish into a crystal-clear image of the future:

There are red tracks in the fresh snow, and pink markings as if something dead has been dragged roughly along the ground. In a darkened forest heavy with hanging shadows of icicles and broken branches, two humans are tied to a tree trunk — girls, nothing more than children, their lips blue with cold and fear. They are alive, but barely; the pulse at each little throat is a slow flit of movement, like the last painful tremors of a dying bird. But the blood around them is fresh enough to be recent, warm enough to sink into the snow like pinpricks. A twig snaps with a gunshot of sound, and one of the girls blearily opens her eyes. Maria and Jasper are standing before them, one smiling, the other staring at the blood in unconcealed horror. Horror and _hunger_... I realize with dread. Obvious hunger. A burning, irrepressible thirst.

I come back to the present with a coldness against my face and a jarring tug on my arm — someone is hauling me off the snow. "Jasper!" I gasp out raggedly, unable to speak anything else but his name. I scream it out as if he can hear me from here, as if I can stop him before it's too late. I struggle with the arms holding onto me, blindly fighting limbs much stronger than my own as I stumble to feet and try to run. "Jasper!"

As if from very far away, I can hear Second's slightly panicked voice. "What's wrong with her? What's happening?"

"_Jasper!_"

Carlisle and Edward are both holding onto me and, even as small as I am, having difficulty. Everyone is talking and yelling at once, some with concern, some with anger, and all the voices are melding together into a ringing sound in my ears. All I can think about is Jasper — how this will hurt him, how this will _kill_ him. A slip up now will drive him away, and I know it. He'll leave, and out of some misguided, god-awful sense of chivalry, he'll leave without me. Beyond myself, I wildly claw against Carlisle and Edward. But when I finally manage to writhe out of their grasp and sprint for the trees, Emmett is there in an instant, engulfing me in what feels like an iron cage.

"Hey, calm down, it's okay," he soothes gently. "You're alright, you're alright." I wait for half a second, and when I don't feel the immediate flood of calm that I normally would have with Jasper, I ache for his touch. This is a void that no one else could ever fill, no matter how brotherly and loving they may be. I clutch my head in my hands, completely limp, numb all the way through. Emmett, sensing my surrender, folds me into a gentle bear hug, and then releases me. "Edward?" he asks, knowing I can't speak.

Edward's hair is mussed from where I must have hit him in the head, and his wool coat is torn at the shoulder seam. "Maria is leading Jasper into a trap," he says flatly. "Humans. Children," he clarifies, glancing at me out of the corner of his eye.

_I have to go to him._ The vision stabs through me again, stronger this time, more real. It's about to happen. It's almost here. It will be minutes from now. Maybe less than that. Waves of coldness wash over me in resignation, and I spin around in the snow and start for the trees again. I know now that I won't be able to stop it. But still... _I have to go to him. I have to go to him. I have to go to him now, now, now._

"No," Edward argues my unspoken thought sharply, already shrugging out of his torn coat. "You stay. I'll be able to find them faster. Emmett?"

Emmett vanishes from my side immediately. "I'm in."

"No!" I shout, stumbling after them, my heart twisted into a hundred cold, needling knots. "He'll need me— I have to— I have to—"

Carlisle gently grips my arm. "_We_ need you. We need you here," he says with a pointed nod at Second. Without Edward here to read minds, they would need my visions to keep an eye on Maria's partner. In all my years, I have never despised my talent more. In all my years, I have never more desperately wished to be normal. When a terrible sound of vulnerability escapes my throat, Carlisle's eyes soften. "Your brothers won't let you down, you know that, Alice." He pauses for a moment, speaking as delicately as possible. "And should the worst happen, the very worst, I don't think Jasper would want you there to witness it."

***

We walk for at least a half an hour in uncomfortable, ugly silence. The birds in the trees are too cold to sing, and the snow has muffled everything but the repetitive crunching sounds of our feet. I ignore Maria's huffy sighs and pointed looks as if she isn't even there. She wanted to go for a walk — we're walking. I refuse to make any more of an effort than that. I don't even want to be here right now, and wouldn't be, if it didn't mean getting all of this over with so Alice and I could return to our normal lives. Maybe the old Jasper, the one who blindly followed her orders, might have broken the silence, but she won't get a damn word out of me.

Maria sighs again. "You aren't saying anything."

I don't even look at her. "You were the one who wanted to talk. Not me."

"I don't understand why you have to be so hostile," she complains haughtily, her heels punching through the top layer of snow in obvious irritation. "In case you didn't notice, I am at least making an effort to be civil. Common courtesy calls for you to do the same."

When I don't respond, her aura simmers with the same calculating malice I remember from my days in Monterrey: plotting, vengeance, fury, hate. My lack of emotion has unsettled her, the same way it always did. Maria, who lives a life of fiery, turbulent emotion, despises nothing more than my indifference. She purses her lips for a moment, then tosses her dark mane of curls back. "She isn't the type of woman I expected you to fall for, you know. The elf. Pretty, in her own way, I suppose. Dainty. Waifish. Clean. But she just doesn't have that extra... something. I always imagined you'd find someone who was able to intrigue your dark side."

_Like who? Like you?_ Long ago, when I was more monster than man, Maria _had_ appealed to my darker side; as ashamed and horrified as I am to admit it. But there is darkness and there is evil, and Maria always skated a very fine line between the two. The feelings she drew out of me had never been freeing or pleasurable in any capacity. Being with her always made me feel as though I were being thrown into a vast blackened pit, body, soul, and spirit. I never, ever, wanted to return to that place again. And I certainly didn't want to drag Alice into it with me — Alice who is all light and beauty. Alice who had tamed the monster inside of me by showing me what it truly meant to love. I turn away from Maria's prying eyes, refusing to engage her in any sort of conversation about Alice. Alice belongs to me, and no one else. I will share no part of her with Maria.

"I still can't believe you live like this," she continues airily. "It unnatural. Does it make you feel _better_ to lower yourself by feeding on animals? By living among the humans? Falling all over yourself to win their approval?"

I give a noncommittal shrug, not allowing her to bait me.

"And your coven!" she laughs. "My god, what a rabble. I maybe would have kept the big one for protection purposes, but the others are beneath you, Jasper, really. This whole family concept is just ridiculous." Her eyes flick sideways at me. "You don't think they'd ditch you the second you compromised their lifestyle? The instant you messed up? Sure, they love you now— when it's convenient and easy, but as soon as you turn back to the old ways, they'll abandon you like a piece of trash. You're not one of them, Jasper. You never will be."

I turn away from her, and study the cold light on the horizon. I hate that she is right, or at least partially right. Perceptive, manipulative Maria... always able to extort my deepest fears. I know I'm not built like the Cullens, or even Alice. Resisting what I truly want is much harder for me; it always has been. Because Maria is right, it _is_ unnatural. For decades and decades I was a slave to my own lust, acting on every desire and whim until my self-discipline all but vanished. I am weak, and I know it. Every day I hang perilously from a slowly-thinning thread. I don't share the same strength as Carlisle, or Alice, or any of the rest of them.

But they are good, and I feel good when I am with them. And, as weak and selfish as I am, I can't force myself to give that up.

"Just tell me what you want, Maria," I say tiredly. "I'm done with this."

Maria mashes her lips together at my rudeness, and lets out a breath through her nose. "I have a business proposition for you."

_Finally_, I think to myself, annoyed that it had even gone on even this long. "No," I answer preemptively.

"You haven't even heard what I have to say!" she objects, so loudly that she startles the few huddled birds out of the icy trees above us. She stomps through the snow like a spoiled child, and I wonder in amazement how I ever could have taken orders from someone so clearly incapable of giving them. Always ruled by her emotions. Always hot-headed. A self-indulgent woman who throws a dangerous, vengeful hissy fit every time she doesn't get her way.

"I don't have to hear it. The answer is no."

Maria stops walking, and I stop to, turning around to face her. She crosses her arms and stares me dead in the eye. "I need you to bargain with Volturi for me," she admits. "They took my territory, my mansion, my funds, my everything. They took everything I had. And I want it back. As of now, they are not inclined to listen to my pleading, but you can change that in an instant with your talent. One tiny, insignificant trial. That's all I want. Then you can go back to your rodent-eating coven and live the rest of your days in peace. Simple."

I scowl. "Nothing is ever simple with you, Maria," I argue flatly. "I don't trust you. I never will. And frankly, after the hell you put me through, I am not inclined to listen to your pleading either. Not for any price. Not ever. The answer is no."

"Are you certain?" she asks quietly, in a strange tone that roils with anticipation. There is danger, serious danger here. Anxiety chills me at the animated look on her face, and the wild sensation of pleasure and murder seeping out of her as she backs away from me, down a sideways path into a darkened forest area I cannot see. Her voice is light and taunting, but there is a hard edge to it, a viciousness that makes my stomach drop. "You had _better_ be certain. You had better be damn certain when you say something like that to me, Jasper. I'm resourceful, you know that. And if you deny me now, I will only find another way to get what I want."

I don't respond well to threats. Not from anyone, but especially not from her. She no longer owned me the way she used to, and she never would again. If she thought she could come here, put Alice in danger, and still expect me to follow her orders, she was in for a severe disappointment. I step forward, and shake her by the arm aggressively. "I said no. I meant no."

In the darkness, her eyes gleam like rubies. "Then I want you to remember, later, when this is all said and done, that you brought this upon yourself. This was your doing. Your choice. Every part of this, from beginning to grisly end, is yours."

The last words are still trailing out of her mouth when I catch the scent of blood. Human blood, and a lot of it. Not hot and pumping through live veins, but fresh and cold and nearly frozen. The smell consumes me, clouds my vision, muddles my mind. After years of nothing but mountain lions and bears, the fresh heady scent of human blood is like a feast set out before a starving man. I am not conscious of letting go of Maria, but suddenly my hand is empty, my fingers still numbed from the icy marble of her skin. I try to stop breathing, try to block it out, but the taste of it is already clinging to my lungs, causing me to shudder with longing. Venom floods my mouth, and my throat works, scalding hot and flayed from the absence of fluid.

On the path in front of us, two dark red streaks trail into the near distance, where blood has washed over snow-crystals and hardened. And tied to a tree across the clearing, are two human girls — just children, lying limp and barely breathing in the quiet winter chill. They are on the edge of death, chalk-pale and unseeing, nothing more than two white faces against the peeling grey bark. Long, jagged cuts run up and down each of their arms, the wounds still wet with blood. I step forward blindly, and a twig cracks under my feet like a gunshot.

One of them opens her eyes a crack, nothing more than a fluttering of eyelashes against nearly-dead human skin, and I spasm slightly, holding a hand up to cover my mouth. Maria smiles, and I realize in dumbstruck horror that this is her revenge. This is her punishment. This is the price of my decision. She saunters forward intently, her posture feline and seductive, and grabs the little girl by the chin. Casually, almost lovingly, she brushes the hair away from her neck, exposing the all-important vein pulsing at her throat. The girl lets out a ragged cry of fear, and the sound that twists my heart into a hard, aching knot. Maria's eyes flick back to me.

"Don't," I plead. "No."

She smiles again — that hideous phantom smile that I remember from my nightmare of a former life, and stabs one of her long manicured nails into the girl's skin like a hook. And as the girl whimpers one final cry, Maria draws her hand across her skin in a harsh slashing movement, opening the jugular and spilling a wave of fresh red onto the cold ground.

It is more than I can take. It is beyond me. It is beyond anyone. One second, I am on my feet — the next I am on my knees. My shaking hands clutch at the small helpless body, and before I can stop myself, before I can even comprehend what I'm doing, my mouth locks onto the already-bleeding throat. The first swallow is heaven. The first swallow is hell. It burns all the way through me — pierces through my soul, even as the cool liquid soothes my searing, blistering throat. And still I drink, and still I die, even as her strength and life spreads through me. And my own heart breaks, cracks, and shatters, even as her beating heart slows to a stop.

When I turn to the other girl beside her, in a possessed state of all-consuming, never-ending, insatiable thirst, Maria picks up the edge of her skirt, turns on her heel, and walks away from me without a backwards glance.

* * *

.

.

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**A/N:** Bitch.


	10. Some Say Ice

**Some Say Ice**

**.**

**.**

**.**

* * *

**(Second)**

I have very little left of my human life, a statement that works both metaphorically and physically. There are no watercolor memories of the people who raised me or the people I loved, no déjà vu snapshots of places I've been to or things that I've seen. I only have the image of Maria turning back to look at me, a memory of blistering fire in my veins, and a battered old wristwatch with an inscription on the back that I don't understand. Unlike my clothing (and, let's be honest, my general sense of identity) for some reason Maria chose not to strip me of the watch. Maybe she didn't notice it, or maybe she thought it of little consequence, but either way, I kept it then, and I still keep it now. However ordinary, the smooth glass face and ticking hands make me feel as if someone must have loved me once. At some point, in some not too distant past, I mattered.

While the two testosterone-overloaded 'heroes' of the veggie coven run off after Maria, I remain standing where I am, and glance down at this watch, counting down the number of minutes with a shake of my head. _Well, that was dumb_, I think plainly, well aware of how much they'll regret this particular act of valor. "That's all?" I ask out loud, directing my question to the blond patriarch. "You're not sending anyone else? Just those two? After Maria?"

He glances at me sideways. "Yes."

"After _Maria_?" I clarify, speaking to him as if he's a very small, unintelligent child who'd been kicked in the head by a mule. He nods. "Well," I say coldly. "I hope you've said your goodbyes then."

I throw this casual threat out there like a fishing line and wait. Every single one of them stiffens at my words, the blonde girl and Jasper's Whitlock's mate both edging into something close to panic. Their supposed leader frowns, and I critically note the differences between him and Maria. Maria, as a leader, has never been calm, caring, or patient. If I made a vague and unsubstantiated warning like that in her presence, she would have immediately demanded to know what I meant, and threatened, coerced, and tortured until I revealed the truth. This strange, unsettling man just places his hands in his coat pockets and stares at me in disapproval.

"I appreciate your concern, but I don't think it will come to that," he says.

I raise an eyebrow doubtfully. Maria is right — the animal-diet has obviously made these already-abnormal vampires go soft. All for the best, I suppose. Their lenience would certainly made my own job easier. Nonchalant and relaxed, as if I haven't a care in the world, I stride toward the snow-covered porch and gingerly ease the canvas knapsack off my shoulders. I recline on the wooden swing, and rock back and forth on my heels. Everyone except for Jasper's little mate watches me like a hawk; her strange yellow eyes are blank and motionless, two cat-eye marbles staring off into the distance. "I could be wrong, of course," I say cheerfully. "I wasn't aware that you'd already trained them to fight an army. How clever of you."

The first tinge of alarm creeps into the patriarch's features. "What?" he whispers.

I sigh. "Look, Carlisle, right?" he nods, and I fold arms behind my head. "To be perfectly honest, Maria doesn't keep me in the loop about much of anything. Whatever she's planning, she tends to keep to herself. But I can tell you right now— she isn't like anyone you've ever dealt with before. She fights dirty," I inform him plainly. "There is no way she would lead the famous _Jasper Whitlock _into a trap unless she had some serious backup. She's smarter than that, I assure you. I'd be shocked if she didn't have an army of just-created, barely containable newborns down there that she's getting ready to let loose on Calgary."

The females shoot each other looks behind Carlisle's back. "And she wouldn't inform you of this grand plan?" one of them asks.

I visibly scoff. "As if she trusts me. Maria works alone."

Much to her detriment. If she had trusted me in New Orleans, we wouldn't be in this mess right now. Actually, if she had trusted me at all, ever, if she valued me even in the slightest, I wouldn't be forced to take such desperate measures against her now. I wouldn't be reduced to this mundane act of ugly, heartless revenge. I don't care what lies come out of her pretty mouth, or what stories she likes to spin when she has me in her bed, the truth of the matter is that she underestimated me, betrayed me, and trussed me up like a lamb for slaughter. And no one —no one— stabs me in the back and lives to tell the tale. Not even the beautiful, beguiling Maria.

I glance down at my wristwatch again. When the little hand ticks to the six, Jasper's mate snaps back to consciousness with a sharp narrowing of her eyes. I very nearly shudder — her fluctuating presence is disturbing to say the least. She reminds me of a wind-up toy — only talking and moving as long as the mechanism lasts, then falling to absolute nothingness until someone winds the crank again. She is there, and she is not there, and when she disappears I wonder where her mind has gone to, what she's seeing behind that blank-eyed stare. I know now that Maria underestimated _her_ too, but I plan on keeping this precious bit of information to myself.

"This can't be right," she says after a moment. "If there was an army, Edward would have known."

"The mind-reader?" I ask, slowly and pointedly. I have to stop myself from getting giddy at the way their faces fall. A gurgle of laughter hangs at the back of my throat. "Check your crystal ball again, honey, and give Maria a little credit. She may be thoroughly unpleasant, but she's also not someone you want to underestimate."

Abruptly, a tremendous boom roars through the silence, shaking the ground and echoing through the valley.

Every member of the coven whirls around to see a dome of flames glowing in the downtown area of Calgary, so bright against the white of the snow that it feels like a forked-spear being shoved into my eyeballs. The fire rolls back into itself with another shaking boom, and a dragon-curl of smoke rises into the air, thick black and ugly. Half a second later, another blast rocks the snow beneath our feet, and two blocks of city apartments go up in flames. Sirens begin to wail in the distance just as another building explodes, sending shrapnel ricocheting across an iced-over river and into a what looks like a schoolyard. I almost laugh — that last one was totally an accident. The timing is so impeccable that I feel like a vaudeville comedy act.

I learn against the porch rail, and spread my hands out as if to say, "I told you so."

I can practically smell their terror — it rises into the air like a curl of smoke, vividly apparent against the winter-white sky. My vague threat of danger just became serious, and none of these bloodless softies is prepared to deal with this kind of thing. The quieter female looks at the patriarch with urgency, touching his arm. "Carlisle?"

Carlisle looks down for a long moment, looking very much as if he wished the following decisions didn't have to be his. I feel no sympathy for him. If Maria were in his shoes, she would have sent an army down ten minutes ago. "Esme, Rosalie, go after the boys," he finally orders, brushing his lips against the quiet one's forehead emotionally. "We'll be right behind you."

The two of them take off immediately, sprinting into the nearby trees like a pair of gazelles, but when Jasper's mate moves forward to follow, the patriarch snags her by the arm. Her eyes blaze with anger, and for a second I'm sure she's going to fight him like she did earlier. But she presses her lips together instead and glowers at me as if this is all my fault. Carlisle, too, rounds on rounds on me like an angry badger and grabs the collar of my shirt. His voice raises to a decibel level I didn't even know his vocal cords were capable of. "What else do you know?!" he demands.

I nearly sneer at his pathetic attempt at intimidation. _Oh, I'm shaking. Just trembling. The combined powers of your sweater vest and matching scarf are far too much for me to overcome! Watch, as I cower before you, oh mighty gelled one! _But I don't have time for his swaggering threats and weak interrogations. Another glance at my wristwatch tells me I only have sixty seconds — I cut this far closer than I would have liked. I throw my shoulders back, take a deep breath, and prepare to put on the performance of a lifetime.

I rip away from him dramatically, and throw my head into my hands like a man fiercely battling against his conscience. Keenly aware of their reaction to this undoubtedly unexpected outburst, I catapult myself off the porch and pace to the far corner of the yard, where I fall to my knees as if in utter agony and beat my hands against the snow. "You don't understand!" I yell out emotionally, even as I practically quake with mirth. From the other side of the yard they stare at me in absolute shock. "You have no _idea_ what I've been through!"

A strange, frantic noise starts ringing from inside the house — a telephone. It startles me at first; I flinch noticeably, but the patriarch only sighs. "That's probably the hospital."

Jasper's mate follows me cautiously during my melodramatic tirade; clearly she doesn't trust me to leave her sight. She treads through the snow as delicately as a fawn approaching an open meadow and hovers midway between the house and my spasmodic form. But Carlisle stays put by the porch — torn between answering the phone and continuing the Spanish Inquisition. He pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs again, a man clearly exasperated with his current station in life. "What am I going to do with you?" he asks out loud. "I can't trust you. I can't leave you here. I can't take you with us. I have no idea what I'm supposed to do with you."

My hands are clenching the snow in front of me, and my wristwatch glints in the weak winter light, counting down ten, nine, eight, seven.... "Oh, at this point, I don't think it really matters."

The phone continues to ring. "I have to get that," the patriarch finally says. "Alice, watch him."

My head snaps up. _No! He isn't actually going inside the house, is he? _I very nearly cackle with glee as he turns and jogs up the porch steps. _He is! He's actually going in!_ _How strange fate is, how diabolical! _

It feels like one of those capricious moments of divine intervention — the same as when Maria turned around to stare at me, her glinting scarlet eyes locking on mine with a jolt of recognition and ownership that I can't seem to banish from my memory the way I've managed to banish everything else. The memory of that moment: her smile, the lashes against her cheeks, a white flash of teeth, clings to me stubbornly, an angel and a demon battling it out on either shoulder.

Tick... tick... tick....

***

Because my eyes are already locked on Second in evaluation, I know that something isn't right. There is a spark of malice in his expression, a gleam of misplaced and sudden excitement that doesn't fit the situation. In less than half a second, my mind assembles the seemingly unrelated fragments: Second's animated eyes, the glint of a wristwatch, Carlisle's quick strides into the house, the abandoned canvas knapsack on the porch, a far-away mechanical ticking. My mind sinks away from the present, and when the future flashes before me like a firestorm, I whirl around instantly and scream so loudly that my voice cracks.

"_CARLISLE, NO!"_

His hand is just turning the doorknob when a final tick sounds. The porch, the house, my entire world, explodes into a ball of flame. Orange light consumes me, rakes against my face like a claw, swipes me backwards off my feet. One minute I am staring in dumbstruck horror, the next I am flying through the air. A roar tumbles over me, the sound itself a living entity, shooting through me as my body flips and the sky spins and turns black. I smash into a nearby tree like a ragdoll, shaking down a rain of snow and branches. Shrapnel knifes into the ground beside me, burning splinters of wood and metal that sink into the snow and arrow sharply into the tree.

The world shimmers, and the ringing in my ears is so loud that I can't hear anything but my own shell-shocked breathing. Everything tilts in slow motion, and the ground slides away from me, ice crystals flickering in time with the leaping flames. I think I say Carlisle's name again, but I can't hear it over the ringing — my hand reaches out toward the heat of the flames as if I could help him somehow, some way. Then a jerking sensation makes the trees whirl past me in a frenzy, and in my buzzing ears a voice that sounds like gibberish is chanting the same phrase over and over again: "come on, come on, come on."

I realize slowly, furiously, that Second is dragging me stumbling over the snow, his thin fingers clamped onto my arm, ash brushed across both his cheeks. A smug, self-satisfied ghost of a smile hovers at the corners of his mouth.

"Get your hands off me," I hiss through clenched teeth, surprised at how guttural and terrifying my own voice sounds.

Second halts, and the satisfied look on his face vanishes. He grabs me again, harshly, this time by the throat, and looks me dead in the eye with an expression that chills me to the bone. There is nothing casual or cavalier about this man, nothing amused or playful. He is all murder and coldness — no one's pawn, no one's inconsequential playmate. Beneath the dark locks of hair and slashing brows, his eyes are like chips of ice. "Really?" he asks evenly. "You want to make this difficult?"

I look ahead quickly, evaluating my two options. If I struggle with Second now and attempt to fight him off, we will still be here when Esme and Rosalie come running back. They are both strong and capable fighters but Second is a well-trained, hardened killer. He will tear them apart in seconds. And, even the hazy uncertain vision of this shatters me — crushing my already-broken heart to fragments of dust. I can't, _won't_, let that happen. Steeling myself, I move onward to the only the other option: surrender. It doesn't matter what vision this choice invokes. I had no delusions about the fact that I would die. But... right or wrong, my own life is not worth the lives of two people I love.

"Fine," I say coldly.

"Excellent choice." Second releases my neck and evaluates me for a moment, studying my eyes intently. I know then that he is aware of my talent, or at least has a general idea of what I'm capable of, but he keeps his silence. And all around us, the snow begins to fall even harder than before, so thickly that I can no longer see the trees three feet in front of us. Behind us, the staggered blue imprints of my footsteps are filling with white, erasing my trail as easily as if I had never existed at all. Second seizes me by the arm again, clamping onto me like a pair of handcuffs, and starts to jog. "How fast can you run?"

"_Fast_," I snarl.

"Good," he says, bursting into a full-on sprint and dragging me along with him. "Try to keep up."

I turn back only once, just in time to see the Cullen house — my home, my sanctuary, my life of peace and safety, collapse in an explosion of flames. Tilted sideways and glinting orange, the attic window disappears behind a veil of smoke. Then I turn my back on it all and face the future again, with the fire hot against my back, a burning funeral pyre that seems to swallow everything whole, even me. My throat works in despair, and I have to bite my lip to keep from falling apart, to keep from edging into the black maw of insanity. It is Middlebury all over again: life slipping through my fingers like grains of sand, faster and faster until there is nothing left.

I wonder idly if this was the plan all along — not just Maria's plan, but Fate's plan as well: to dangle something before me so precious, so unbearably perfect, only to snatch it away.

The trees slide past me in a blur of color. I know I'm moving, I know I'm running, but I feel nothing. I see nothing. I _am_ nothing. Not without Jasper, not without my family. I reach out to them in visions, and get solid, unchanging images that make my heart ache with longing: Esme and Rosalie gasping in horror at the burning house, Carlisle being pulled from the wreckage, all three of them racing through the debris calling out my name. I want to see Jasper the most, but I don't dare search for him, not even in visions. If I saw him now, all of my resolve would crumble. If I saw him now, I would only want to go back.

After what seems like hours, Second finally stops and releases me. But instead of trying to escape, I only stare around numbly, a prisoner within my own body. _Is this where he will kill me?_ I wonder in detachment. _Here, miles away from everyone I love_? _In a place were no one will ever find me?_ We are in a round clearing, and the bows of the trees above us are singed black and naked of pine needles, ominous charred claws that reach down at me. But Second, my would-be executioner, seems unconcerned with my fate. Ignoring me steadily, he swivels back and forth as if searching for something, bends down to a specific spot near the base of a tree, and starts digging in the snow like a burrowing animal.

_Is he crazy? _I wonder, watching him throw the excess snow behind him in a huge pile that nearly reaches my hip. _Am __I_ _crazy?_ I can see no logic behind this frantic digging, no reason. It just further muddles the irrational strands of thought in my mind. Like blowing up a house, or making a heartless murderer out of a man who just wanted to live in peace. Nonsensical, all of it. Absurd.

Second reaches the frozen dirt beneath the snow and keeps digging, more excitedly now, his marble fingers working through the solid mud until color is revealed beneath — a scrap of dirty fabric. He pulls the bundle out carefully and unfolds it, staring at something wrapped within. For one wild moment I think it is a baby, from the tender way he holds it against his chest. But there is no heartbeat, and no living thing exists beneath the folds — just a pile of money.

"What is that?" I ask dully. Nothing makes sense anymore, nothing seems right. Nothing seems real. My own voice echoes in my ears like a stranger's.

He grins back at me. "$750,000."

Without even asking my permission, he takes out the stacks of bills and begins stuffing them in the pockets of my winter coat. The money smells like smoke and burnt spices, and it feels heavy on either side of me, weighted down with meaning and betrayal. I want to stop him, but for some reason neither my hands nor my mouth seems to work. I can only watch in numb detachment as he readjusts the bills so that it looks like my coat is just heavily-lined and not weighted down with what appears to be stolen money. "Hold onto that for me, would you, doll?" he asks merrily. "And maybe keep it hush-hush for awhile? Thanks."

Then he grabs onto my arm again, and once more takes off into the snow at a hard run.

We fly over a low ridge of hills and dash up a mountainside without pausing, the wind blowing so hard against us that I nearly topple backwards. I feel entombed in this world of white uncertainty, wrapped in icy wet sheets that pin down my arms and numb my mind. The scenery changes slightly — high and rocky instead of thick with trees, but I can't decipher how long we've been moving or how far we've gone. This aimless running feels like an exhausting form of torture. _Just kill me!_ I feel like screaming at him. _What are you waiting for? _

But when I see a lone figure standing imperially on a rocky outcrop ahead, wearing a soaked dress of red satin, I understand.

"You're late," Maria snarls down at us.

Next to me, Second's eyes narrow to slits. Without warning he shoves me forward with a harsh push against my spine, making me stagger and nearly fall. "And successful," he adds pointedly.

There was no army, I realize, looking between the two of them and connecting all of the nonsensical pieces. There was no war. There was only Maria, and Second, and a plan to get me away from Jasper. I look behind us in dread, and realize that even in the short minute that we had been standing here, the trail of our footprints had disappeared beneath a layer of snow. Jasper couldn't follow me, even if he wanted to. That's what the blizzard was about — a way for them to get me out of Calgary, a way for them to cover their tracks and keep Jasper from finding me.

Maria descends the cliff with a light jump, and lifts an eyebrow at Second. "What? You want a cookie? A pat on the head?"

He scowls. "I don't know. Jesus. Maybe a 'thank you'?"

She laughs, a harsh sound that grates on my already shredded nerves. "You should know better than that, Second. Really. I'll thank you when this is all over with— when Monterrey is mine again, and the Louisiana coven is feeding off rats and chickens in some window-less, reeking shack," she says complacently. Her eyes cut over to scrutinize me, and when her lips curve into an overconfident smile, I remember what I saw in my vision — the pleased look on her face as she led Jasper into a trap, the satisfaction. "Let's get a move on. As soon as they figure out what happened, they'll be hot on our heels."

The hazy uncertainty of my situation clears, leaving me with nothing but a white-hot, terrible rage. It burns in my core the same way thirst burns my throat, deep and roiling in my gut. It isn't enough that she destroyed Jasper long before I even met him, that she damaged him beyond repair and ways that no one could ever know. But even after that, after he had finally found peace and solace, she still had to slither back into his life again. She is poison — poison for Jasper and poison for me, tainting every aspect of our life. I watch malevolently as she saunters away, hating her nonchalance, and her casual, arrogant disdain. When she notices that I'm not moving, she turns with a sigh and grabs my arm the same way Second did.

"Keep up, Princess. I'm not wasting anymore of my time on you."

I whip my arm out of her grasp so fast she stumbles. "You expect me to go with you after what you did to Jasper?" I whisper, shivering with rage.

Maria blinks once at my sudden fury, then rolls her eyes. "He's _fine_. Everyone's fine. Obviously I need Jasper, so it isn't like I harmed him in any manner."

I picture Jasper's broken face — his lifeless, shadowed eyes as he clutched the dead bodies of those two little girls, and feel something dark and horrible rise up within me. I am not, by nature, a vengeful person. Nor a violent one. I tend to find compassion for most people, even those who might not entirely deserve it. But Maria's insouciance tears away at me, evaporates every ounce of kindness and moral-integrity. I want to murder this woman, actually rip her throat out with my bare hands. I want it so badly that my hands shake, my chin trembling. What has _she_ ever lost? What does _she_ know about grief and suffering?

"You have no _idea_ how much you harmed him," I hiss, my eyes glittering. "You have no idea how much this— on top of everything else you've already done— will haunt him, how much it will weigh him down with guilt. Guilt that _never_ leaves— guilt that he will carry around for the rest of his life. They were just little girls! _Children!"_

Deeming me no threat, Maria ignores me completely. Instead, she looks at Second. "You told her?"

I realize then, that in my blind rage I had said too much — through my vision I knew about an aspect of the plot that I shouldn't have, and I just unknowingly revealed the one thing that might save me. I wait for Second to give me up and explain what he must suspect about my visions by now, but he doesn't say anything about future visions or premonitions. He only hesitates a moment, then shrugs. "I didn't know it was a secret."

"Learn some discretion, then," Maria snaps at him, and grabs my arm again. Her mere touch makes my skin crawl with loathing. I forget all else but this wild hatred, and the need for vengeance strikes up within me like a blazing torch. For what she did to Jasper back then, for what she's done to him now... I want her dead. I want her dead, and I no longer care about the cost of murder to my soul; I will kill her before she has a chance to kill me, right or wrong be damned. But she feels the way my muscles tighten beneath her fingertips, and the fiend within her recognizes the dark look in my eyes.

"Don't even think about it," she says flatly. "I have almost a century of training, strategy, and war. I can, and will, kill you. Even Jasper had enough sense not to—"

"Don't talk about him like you know him!" I spit out wildly. "Just _don't_!"

Jasper, my Jasper, with his quiet smiles and intense stares, was not the same Jasper Maria had so long ago owned. My Jasper, who loved to read and write and build things; the one who loved me with a burning steady thoroughness, didn't even remotely deserve the punishment of sharing any part of his life with this demon.

"I know a lot of things," she says coolly. "I know about his sense of honor, for one. Do you honestly think that tired sense of chivalry will allow him to stand idly by while I tie you to the train tracks? No. For whatever inconceivable reason, Jasper has feelings for you. Feelings that I will now use to my advantage. This is a business transaction, Princess. Nothing personal. And it was also, I might add, _Jasper's_ choice. I very politely told him what would happen if he didn't cooperate, and he still chose to refuse me. His decision is what led you to this fate— he gave you up to save himself. You might want to think about that, before you start making threats."

I don't doubt that Jasper refused her, but I know with utter certainty that he never would have if he had known that the cost would be my life. Stealing me away from him wasn't necessary. If Maria had known anything about love at all, she would have threatened him with my death in the first place. _Still,_ I think raising my head up,_ I'd rather die than have him return to her service_. Knowing how noble Jasper is, and how much he loves me, I am almost ironically glad that it happened this way. "So, what? You're going to kill me now. Out of spite?"

She glares at me. "Have you even listened to a single word I've said? No. Of course I'm not going to kill you. Not unless you follow Jasper's bad example and choose to be difficult. I'd rather you didn't. This is a win-win situation. Very simple, really. Just a quick trip down to Monterrey where the Volturi are holding trail. I need you there, because as I mentioned, where you go, Jasper will follow. And I need Jasper there to affect the verdict. As soon as he does, and I get my territory back, I'll happily let you go." She holds out her hands like a pair of scales. "So: you come with us, and everyone stays alive and happy. You refuse, you die, and then Jasper has even more guilt heaped on his head."

"If he survives," Second adds, "which he likely won't."

Because I refuse to believe either one of these prolific liars, I cautiously check ahead, allowing myself to slip away from the present and into the future. The image that echoes back at me is the same for both choices, yes or no, with only a slight varying difference. Either way, the vision is not a pleasant one— both make my throat close up with horror: a bonfire, a forest full of smoke, branches dripping with the vestiges of rapidly melting snow. The only slight, barely discernible difference between the two is that in one vision I am there, and in the other I am not.

When I come back to the present, I know I have been gone for too long. Maria is angry, threatening, jerking me back and forth with a fiery look in her eyes. "What was that?" she shrieks, irritated by my lack of response. "What did you just do? Answer me!"

I bite my lip and wonder how I can get out of telling her, but Second gently pulls Maria away and rubs his hands up and down her arms soothingly. "Don't bother," he says in a bored voice, "she won't be able to answer you. There's something wrong with her, mentally— there was some sort of accident when she was changed. Every once and awhile she just blacks out and comes back babbling like a mental patient. It happened earlier, and the coven told me about it."

I stare at him, torn between feeling insulted by his interference or grateful for it. For reasons I'm not sure I understand, the secret stays hidden between us — like the stolen money in my coat pockets — away from Maria's prying eyes.

She looks down at me in disdain, disgusted by what she perceives as a weakness. "Figures," she drawls spitefully. "Jasper always _did_ have a soft spot for the defective ones. If it happens again, throw her over your shoulder and keep running. We don't have time for mental breakdowns." She picks up the edge of her bedraggled skirt, and starts to run into the snowy distance. "Let's get on with it, no breaks. The whole coven is probably right behind us."

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**A/N: **I have to take a short break due to an impending deadline, but I will be back and writing again the week of the 22nd. Be patient, pretty please? With a cherry? :)


	11. Hope

**Hope**

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In the cold light of mid-afternoon, that precarious hour between high noon and sundown, the world remains the same. The sky is still boundless and white. The air is still chilled to freezing. The snow still falls in soundless curtains over an unshaken, unchanged landscape. Little birds twitter in the trees above the way they always have, and out of the bracken a snow-white rabbit hops twice, and disappears into thicket. Everything in and of the world is the same as it has always been, except that I am alone and Alice is gone.

_I am alone_, I repeat to myself, trying to make sense of it. _Alice is gone. _Though time holds virtually no meaning for those of our kind, the everlasting immortals who know no age or death, the hours in which Alice is not at my side seem to stretch on longer than anything I've ever felt. Nothing has changed, and yet everything has changed. For I return from a moment of weakness — from the unspeakable sin of taking two young, innocent lives, to find my own existence rendered pointless. Even the burning Cullen home, lighting up the sky with fire and smoke, serves as a slap in the face reminder: _Everything is gone_, it seems to say, and I watch unblinking as all of my happy memories, all of my images of Alice curled up beside me in the quiet attic, go up in red-orange flames. _Everything is gone._

"I'm sorry, son," Carlisle says from behind me, his voice muddled by my strange, disjointed thoughts. He puts a hand on my shoulder, but I don't feel it. "By the time we figured out what had happened, their tracks had already disappeared."

Some terrible abyss is threatening to swallow me whole; an all-encompassing wave of grief and guilt that rushes at me much faster than I can fight. I am standing in the yard with the rest of the Cullens, next to what remains of their home — a flaming black skeleton of a life I didn't deserve in the first place. I can barely bring myself to look at them. Without Alice there to serve as my link to this coven, this family, I feel like a complete and utter outsider. Our differences are thrown into even sharper contrast now that my eyes have been muddied with a sheen of blood-red: evidence of my failure and the horrendous price that my moment of weakness managed to cost.

Edward and Emmett had helped me bury the two young girls, and neither one of them spoke to me as we worked to hide the evidence. The emotion of fury spoke volumes though; the rage rippling through both of their auras was enough to make me want to cower in shame. It isn't in my heart to understand that it might not be me they're angry with. All I know, all I see, is my failure. A failure that had even more devastating consequences than I thought. When we made our way back to the Cullen house, we found the others already searching for Alice. My perfect, beautiful Alice — stolen by the dark-haired demon who had already beaten me and left me for dead.

"Do you think... do you think they... They wouldn't... Alice isn't...." Esme trails off, unable to even finish the sentence.

But Edward shakes his head. "No. No, this was too strategic to be murder. If Maria wanted Alice dead— either out of pure spite or as a form of revenge on Jasper, she would have done it in front of him. She would have done it immediately. And there was ample time for it. Second could have killed Alice at any point after the explosion. They must have stood here in the yard for at least two or three minutes before leaving— definitely enough time for an experienced soldier to make a kill. We can only assume that this was a plan to kidnap, not kill. Maria has an agenda."

"But what?"

Edward glances at me silently, and I hang my head. "Monterrey," I say in monotone. "She's taking her to Monterrey."

The Cullens all grow very still, and the cords of fear and worry in the air wrap tight around my throat like a stranglehold. They've heard me talk about the South enough to know that it is dangerous and volatile, even more so when Maria is involved. After my depiction of life as Maria's first and foremost soldier, I would be surprised if they _weren't_ alarmed by this news. The thought of tiny, delicate Alice being dragged into the maw of territory wars and savage battle tactics is sickening. Emmett leans forward and growls audibly, like an angry bear. "Is it because of Alice's talent?"

I stare grimly at Edward, and when he frowns back at me without surprise, I can tell that it's not the first time he's pondered that particularly dreadful scenario. If Maria discovered Alice's talent, the situation would immediately darken. The temptation would be too much for Maria to bear — by forcing Alice to reveal the future, not only could she create the perfect army, but she could also keep herself hidden from our coven (and the Volturi) forever. To a creature of ambition like Maria, the possibilities of Alice's talent would be endless. She would be unstoppable.

"No," Edward answers for me calmly. "And we should count ourselves lucky that she isn't aware of what Alice can do. It's actually Jasper's talent that she's after. The Volturi are holding trial over Maria's territory war in New Orleans, where she revealed our kind to a city of human witnesses. Maria wanted Jasper there to affect the verdict. He said no—"

Carlisle closes his eyes briefly. "So Alice is the bait."

I put my head in my hands. After all these years of trying to protect Alice from my past, of trying to keep her safe, still... _still_ my own weakness damned her. If I had been strong enough to walk away from those two little girls, strong enough to turn away from the scent of fresh blood and carnage, Alice never would have been taken from me. I would have killed Second _and_ Maria before they even touched her. Was this my reward, then? My fate? Is this the punishment for my selfish weakness — to have the one thing I ever loved, the brightest most beautiful angel, stolen away? The black pit beneath me opens up again, and tugs hard at my resolve to stay lucid.

"This is good news in a way, isn't it?" Esme speaks up tentatively. "If Maria wants Jasper's cooperation, she wouldn't dare hurt Alice."

I say nothing. I know Maria too well to be comforted by Esme's heartfelt logic.

Again, Edward answers for me. "Maria has a very short fuse. She makes decisions based on emotion, not reason. As of now, you're right, she isn't intending to harm Alice. In fact, it's in her best interest not to. But there's no guarantee that she won't make a snap decision to kill. If she panics, if she's insulted, if she learns something that makes her angry..."

Emmett straightens up, and looks uncharacteristically serious and deadly. "Then we'll go. We'll go after them, right now."

"The _house_," Rosalie snaps, breaking her silence for the first time. She gestures at the still-smoking wreckage before us. "The city. The hospital. The _humans_. Carlisle's got a job— as a _doctor_. They need him right now. Trust me, they're going to notice if he doesn't show up for this shift. If we pack up and run without tying up our loose ends, who do you think they're going to blame all of this on? Especially when the authorities find two dead bodies on our property." Her eyes cut to me for a split second, irritated by my further contribution to the chaos.

"For God's sake, Rose. It's _Alice,_" Edward hisses.

Rosalie crosses her arms peevishly, but has the grace to look at least a little ashamed. "I'm not saying we shouldn't go after her," she says in a softer tone. "I care about Alice too. I _do_, Edward! So you can stop looking at me like that! All I'm trying to say is that we can't _all_ go after her. We have to act like normal concerned citizens who just had their house burned down. We need to quit our jobs, be taken out of school, collect the insurance..."

I lift my head up and meet her narrowed eyes. For all her selfish abrasiveness, Rosalie is perhaps the clearest thinker of the Cullen family. She is able to make hard, objective decisions... even if they're unpopular ones. I nod at her slowly. "Rosalie is right. Don't disrupt your lives on my behalf anymore than you already have," I tell them firmly. Enough has happened to them already because of me; the charred house smoking in the background is perhaps the least of their troubles at the moment, or it _will_ be, as soon as the police come looking for those girls. The last thing I needed right now was one of them getting hurt of killed. "I'll go after Alice alone."

"Don't be stupid," Edward snarls at me. "You and I will find Alice together."

"Not without me, you won't," Emmett growls, but Rosalie shoots him a glare so harsh that it could peel the skin from his face. He withers slightly. "I mean, I'll be _here_, but I'll be there for you. By the phone, you know. In case you need backup."

Rosalie turns the death-glare on Carlisle, looking very much the bossy authority on matters of espionage and covert operations. "You can't go either. We all want to help Alice, but these fires are the kind of thing that calls the Volturi's attention, and if what Edward said about Maria's trial is true, then they're not too far away to do something about _this_ mess as well. You're our inside connection, Carlisle. Aro is your friend. If the Volturi come here looking to punish someone...." she trails and doesn't finish. "Jasper, Edward, and I can handle Maria just fine."

Emmett whips his head around to stare at her, open-mouthed. "Wait, wait. You get to go? How come I don't get to go? If you get to go, I get to go, Babe. Those are the rules. I'm sure as hell not gonna stay here if you're going with them."

I press my lips together and feel like screaming at them. Going after Maria is not a _prize_. It is not some sort of _adventure_. It is a task that will most likely end in death, blood, and pain. Any one of them could be killed following after me— didn't they understand that? Maria might need me for the trial, but the rest of the Cullens were completely expendable. And I can't handle another death on my conscience. Especially not... especially not my _family_. I had grown to care for these animal-eating vampires, admire them, respect them. I had already let them down enough. I refused to drag them into the dark corners of my past.

"_No one_ is going with me. No one. This is my problem, and my problem alone. I don't want any of you slowing me down or getting in the way."

Carlisle opens his mouth to object, and but Edward holds up hand up to stay him. The two stare at each other in silent communication for a long moment, then Carlisle nods at me. "As you wish," he says, a little too easily. "I do not agree with your viewpoint, but Alice is your wife and therefore this is your decision. I understand that it will be difficult, but I only ask that you try to keep in touch as best as you're able to on the road. No matter what has happened today, you are a part of our family. We want to know that both you and Alice are safe."

I straighten up from my broken posture. This is wasting my time. Precious hours are going by in which Alice is alone and probably afraid. "Fine," I say.

There is nothing else that I would want or need. If Alice were with me, she would have wanted to pack a bag, grab her sketchbook, or at least convince me to change out of my nice leather boots. But she is gone, and I am alone, and I suddenly feel the way I did before — years ago, when I was chasing her sunshine scent across the country, never knowing if she was anything more than a dream. Nothing has changed, and yet everything has changed. Because now that I've tasted the reality of the dream — now that I've held her in my arms and felt the unbearable warmth of love, there was no going back to the man I used to be. If I couldn't get her back, it would break me. It would break me the way nothing else has ever managed to.

And I don't blame Maria. I don't. This is my fault, and I know it. Years ago, I made the decision to be a part of Alice's life, knowing full well that my past would always, always be lurking in the background. If I had been a better man, a stronger man, I would have walked away from her before it was too late. I had my chances, I did. I remember each and every opportunity, and each and every time I turned back to her again. The desire to be with her, to look into her eyes, to hold her hand in mine, outweighed every other complication. Again, my selfishness. My weakness. Because Alice gave me something that rainy night in Philadelphia, when her hand reached for mine the first time. She made me feel something that I never even knew I needed, and something I can no longer survive without.

_Hope._

I am not one for goodbyes, so I merely turn and start to walk away from them, from these people who have unwittingly become five more victims of my love. Esme reaches out to press a gentle hand against my arm, her eyes full of compassion. "Be careful."

"Good luck, man. You need me, you just call," Emmett shouts after me. "Any time! Day or night! I'll be here!" And I imagine, though I don't turn around to see, that Rosalie is holding him back by the shirt collar.

When the burnt home of the Cullens disappears behind me and the terrain starts to move uphill, I jog into a full-out run, letting my senses guide me. The snow has already covered the tracks that Alice had left behind, and I know Second would have been careful enough to not let her touch anything on the side of the path, no leaves, no branches, no trees. Her familiar scent is distorted by the wind; traces of sunshine are embedded in the nearby frozen leaves, but they are older — probably from the last time she and I had gone for a walk. Tracking her is not an option, then. Second's formidable talent of snow and ice had proved itself more than useful. Maria knew I wouldn't be able to follow them. She knew I would have to make my way to Monterrey if I wanted to get Alice back.

The problem is, I don't want things to go that far. I don't want Alice to be involved with Maria or even be traveling with Maria, not when the Volturi already had its eye on her. I don't want to call any more unwanted attention to Alice than necessary. Like Maria, if the Volturi discovered Alice's gift of seeing the future, they would not be able to resist the temptation. They would seek to recruit her into the guard, possibly by force. I don't trust the Volturi at all, nor consider them to be the cultured, peacekeeping mediators that Carlisle speaks of. I had seen the aftermath of some of their "negotiations." Carlisle had not.

Still at a full-run, I tilt my head up to the horizon and calculate. I have to find Maria before she gets to Monterrey. I want Alice out of her hands before they even begin to approach the South.

Because Maria is on such a time-sensitive schedule, the idea of her creating a decoy trail and heading any direction other than south seems counterproductive. Even with Second covering their tracks, I can't imagine that she would dare to travel east or west while the Volturi is impatiently waiting for her in Mexico. She would want to get there as soon as possible, and the best way to do so would be a simple, straight-shot run south. The question is: which route? Would she go through the mountains — the more secretive, demanding path? Or would she take the valley out and pass through the cluster of cities in the foothills?

"The mountains. She likes a challenge."

I whirl around. Edward is standing behind me in the open path, his hair covered in snowflakes and soot. At first, I can only blink at the sight of him casually strolling up to me, but my shock is quickly overshadowed by rage. Did it have to be Edward? Really? Edward is Carlisle and Esme's favorite. The golden child. The leader. The goddamn mind reader who can't manage to stick to his own business and leave me to my misery like everyone else. Because I can think of nothing else to do that doesn't involve breaking his neck, I turn away from him and curse heatedly under my breath. Was he stupid? Did he not hear what I said?

"Oh, believe me, Jasper— we all heard you. Loud and clear." But he falls into step beside me, and matches me step for stubborn step. "It's just, there's really very little you can do to stop me."

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**A/N:** Thank you so much for your patience, everyone. I couldn't just leave you dangling on the edge of that cliff, now could I? :) It's good to be back, and I'm totally excited about writing future scenes with Edward and Jasper playing hero. Out of everyone in the family, I think they have the best dynamic together.


	12. An Equal Measure

**An Equal Measure**

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"I'm thirsty."

Second's voice floats up to me through the howling wind, and his tone is not a whiny snivel, but instead a cold demand. He talks to me as if _he_ is the one in charge now, and I am the servant simpering at his feet hoping for a scrap of goodwill. It seems obvious the sudden decrease in temperature and miserable weather conditions are due to his interference. And it isn't a childish fit this time — Second isn't acting like a spoiled child stomping his feet over a desired toy. He is acting like a man who will do anything, at any cost, to get his way. It makes me uncomfortable, this new persona of his, and it makes me wonder what he might be capable of.

Second has always been more defiant than my other lovers, but throughout our years together he always managed to retain at least a veneer of respect for me. And however fabricated it might have been, that veneer made his impertinence acceptable — because of it, I knew he feared me. Now though, something has been lost. He no longer holds me in the same esteem that he used too, and he is beginning to test the boundaries of his own power against mine; striking flint to see if he can start a fire. As if I'd ever let him have control over me. I ignore him, and simply toss my hair back in the wind, leaping lightly over the rocky terrain.

"Did you not hear me?" he demands, and hail begins to fling down with the volley of snow, bouncing against my hard skin like icy pebbles. "I'm _thirsty_."

Finally, I come to a halt and slowly turn around to face him. He standing ten feet behind me in a shaft of liquid moonlight, his hand gripped white-knuckled on the arm of Jasper's little tramp. Alice looks back at me blandly, and I wonder what she thinks of this: our constant bickering and power struggles. We have been running for several hours now on into nightfall, and Second and I have done little but glare at each other and snip like a pair of rabid polecats. But as I look into his eyes I can see that the thirst is not a lie; his irises are too dark for comfort, and Second has never been known for his patience when it comes to blood. "Well, what do you expect me to do about it?" I ask imperiously.

He tilts his head slightly, and the hail comes to an abrupt stop. "Let's pretend for a moment that Whitlock's coven _does_ catch up to us. That it comes down to a fight. How much help am I going to be when I'm thirsty and weak?"

Jasper's mate turns away at the thought of that dreadful scenario, her delicate profile silhouetted by the moon. Her eyes glaze over slightly as she stares off into nothing — a constant habit of hers that I find every bit as annoying as I do disturbing. Second jerks at her arm to wake her up again, and she presses a hand against her temple as if she has a headache. Her flashing gold eyes are full of bewildered pain, and look startling unnatural against the pallor of her skin. How Jasper could stand to be with such a freak of nature, I have no idea. But there was no question that he would come after her: the villain had stolen his lady love —however odd and disconcerting she may be— and the heroic prince would stop at nothing to rescue her.

"Fine," I say to Second, with an arrogant turn of my head. "We can go down through the next valley and dine on whatever humans we find first. We can't afford be choosy." My gaze alights on Alice again, who frowns at this heartless discussion as if she's above the bloodlust that affects us all. As if she's never felt a human's heartbeat stutter to a stop in her hands. As if she's simply too good for any of this. Too good for me. "And I suppose _you're_ thirsty too?" I ask her pointedly.

"No."

My eyes gleam in the darkness. "It would be a good time to cheat, you know. You could always say we forced you."

"No thank you," she says, all politeness and grace. Her poised resistance, even in face of such temptation, makes me despise her even more. Oh, how I would relish it if she slipped up. If Jasper's perfect princess was returned to him with blood on her hands. What would he think of her then? Could he even stand to look at her when her eyes were ruby-red and glinting like mine? But something in Alice's quiet refusal makes me think that I could never lure her into debauchery the way I did Jasper. She has her weaknesses, to be sure, and I would search out every single one of them before I allowed her to leave my clutches. But bloodlust wasn't her problem.

I scowl at her peevishly, and cross my arms. "You needn't starve yourself. I'm sure Second would be glad to skin a squirrel for you."

Second laughs out loud, and for the moment the two of us are connected again, bonded by a mutual disrespect for this yellow-eyed coven's way of life. But then he looks down at the tiny captive in his grasp, and even though his features are arranged in disdain, I am suddenly bothered by the physical closeness between them. He could kiss her, if he wanted to, only by yanking her other shoulder around so that she faced him. Jealously floods my stomach like poison. Not that I feel threatened by this short-haired, boyish little ninny. But if she dares to steal Second from me the way she stole Jasper, I will rip her throat out before her next breath. I watch with calculating eyes as she inclines her head slightly at my suggestion of squirrel meat, supremely unmoved by my spite.

"I'd rather not, thank you. I can fend for myself."

"Fine," I snarl ungraciously. "Have it your way then, you little fool. It makes no difference to me how Jasper finds you: starved, charred, or in a thousand shredded pieces. As long as I get my way."

If she's shocked by my behavior, she doesn't show it, and for some reason her indifference infuriates me even further.

Within the span of half a breath, I am at her side, and I note with pleasure the fear in her eyes when I grab her roughly by the arm. I pull her away from Second like a sprig of wishbone and carve my nails into the wool fabric of her coat. Second might have had mercy on her delicate limbs and fragile beauty, but I feel nothing of the sort. I drag her down the rocky hillside with savage elation, delighting in her every stumble. _This is what happens,_ I say silently to Jasper, wherever he may be, _when you choose a soft woman over a hard one. She can't keep up. She can't stay fighting. She can't hit you match for match because she's too weak and too timid to keep going._

I know my temper is out of control, but at this point things have gone too far and there's nothing I can do to snuff it out. The stress of everything: the Volturi trial, the loss of my territory, Second's attitude, Jasper's rejection, Alice's angelic flawlessness... it all piles on top of me until I feel nearly crippled with the pressure. How easy would it be to simply pack up and run? Without Second. Without a dime to my name. Without any sort of plan. As loathsome as the lifestyle of Jasper's coven may be, it also feels strangely appealing to me as I run down the mountain ridge with the weight of my every decision aching on my shoulders.

The snow closes down over us again like a white curtain, and Second follows close behind us at a run. Together, the three of us cut through the dark landscape toward the sleeping valley below, where a small city rests aglow in amber light.

***

Hours pass by and we find absolutely nothing. Not one scent. Not one footprint. Not even a hint that Alice or anyone else has ever passed through these mountains. The wind has disappeared within the hour, leaving behind a gaping stillness only broken by the rhythmic crunch-a-crunch-a-crunch of our footsteps. The snow has stopped falling as well, and the fresh layers glow an unearthly white beneath a low-hanging moon. We are at the top of a mountain ridge overlooking a series of cities nestled in a valley — all of them lit with tiny amber lights in a sea of black-blue shadows and brilliant white. If Alice were here looking at this moonlit view, she'd call it beautiful. But it looks like nothing more than loneliness to me.

I can feel Edward's eyes on my back as I trudge on through the snow, and something like pity thickens the air around me. My fists clench at my sides. I don't want Edward's pity. I don't _anyone's_ pity. The last thing I need right now is some arrogant mind-reader feeding me baseless 'wisdom' as he tries to counsel me out of my grief. _You can stop that right now_, I order him silently, not even bothering to turn around and look at insulted face. _Stop pitying me, goddamn it._

"It's not pity. It's compassion," Edward corrects easily. "And I'm not going to counsel you. You'd never listen anyway," he mutters under his breath.

No, I wouldn't. The only person who's opinion I'd even bother taking into consideration right now had been kidnapped. Because I was too selfish... too _weak_ to stop it from happening. Cold all over with shame, I wonder if Alice actually saw it — if her visions had revealed to her the terrible atrocity I would commit. The thought makes me feel sick. Alice had always believed in me so thoroughly, so relentlessly. Even when I didn't believe in myself. What a wake-up call for her it must have been, to realize that I wasn't the good man she thought I was. To realize that I wasn't even a shadow of that man. Not today. Not now. Not ever. _But maybe,_ I think with a stab of gut-wrenching, unbearable pain, _maybe it's better this way. Maybe she will finally see that she is better off without me, that I never deserved her in the first place._

Behind me, Edward snorts.

"Something amuse you?" I ask curtly.

"Sadden me, actually," he says in a haughty tone. "You clearly know nothing about Alice at all."

White with anger, I whirl around to face him, my jaw clenched so tightly that my teeth crack under the stress. All of my hidden jealousy and spite rises to the surface, quickly followed by the murderous fiend that had killed far greater men for far lesser insults. How. Dare. He. Even. _**Think**_ of saying a thing like that to me. As if I don't know my own wife. My own mate. My other _half_. As if I haven't watched, observed, and catalogued every single detail about her heart — a heart far too precious, and far too _good_ to ever be held by bloodstained hands like mine. "Who the hell do you think you are, saying something like that to me?" I hiss, my shoulders arching back in hatred.

Unimpressed, Edward just crosses his arms and stares back at me. He leans into the shadows of an overhanging rock, and his eyes glow in the darkness like embers. "Alice doesn't care about any of that, Jasper. She doesn't. Not at all. She doesn't care what you were, who you were, what you did, or even what you'll do."

Out in the open, with moonlight beaming all around me and Edward prying uninvited into my thoughts, I feel volatile, defensive, like an animal backed into a corner._ She doesn't care because she doesn't understand—_

"Of course she understands. She's not stupid."

Rage rises to the surface again, and I advance on him like charging lion. "I know she's not stupid!" I roar at the top of my lungs, and my voice echoes off the empty landscape like a gunshot. No one knew better than I how intelligent Alice was, how intricate, how fragile, how _utterly blinded by love. _It was her love for me — this baffling, unbearable, completely incomprehensible love, that kept her from seeing the true monster within. She couldn't see how she needed to be protected. She couldn't see how much danger I'd put her in over the years. She couldn't see how much safer she'd be if I disappeared from her life forever. All she saw, all she felt, was love, and it had blinded her.

"I think it more likely that _you're_ the one blinded by love, Jasper," Edward says, in a disarmingly gentle tone.

I visibly start at these softly spoken words, and Edward's face creases into a look of compassion that pierces right through me. The burning fiend within fades to nothing more than a dull ache behind my ribcage, and I hang my head in something like defeat. As much as I hate to admit that Edward is right — especially since he can hear the compliment — he is. With me, there has always been an equal measure of love and protectiveness when it comes to Alice. And the two opposite sides are constantly battling it out on either shoulder, fighting over precedent in my heart. For me, love has no other theme than this: Do I stay, or do I go? Do I keep her, or do I protect her? Do I stay beside her, or do I leave?

But Edward, for all his perceptiveness, is not capable of understanding the difficulty of these decisions. Things are not always black and white. Edward has never been in love — and he has no point of reference for these stern opinions. "Not that I discount your advice in this matter, Edward. I don't. I understand why you're saying these things. But I'd really like to see how well _you_ react when you've put the woman _you_ love in danger."

"Well, there's very little chance of that," he says bitterly.

His hardened face suddenly reminds me of myself, years ago, before I had ever met Alice or felt the certainty of her delicate hand in mine. Edward had been alone for a very long time now, an outsider in a family of happy couples, and I could clearly see that the isolation was wearing on him. But that was his choice, wasn't it? He had made his decision to live life this way. It wasn't as if Edward hadn't had chances. Tanya, for one—

"—Isn't right for me," Edward interrupts immediately, and he fixes me with a disapproving look. "Surely you could have seen that, with your gift. Her heart and mine share absolutely no semblance of compatibility."

I turn my face up to the moon, which glows down on me benevolently, almost warmly, and think... for the first time in a long time, that I am lucky. Even in my depressing struggle over what is right and what is wrong, at least I know with light-struck certainty that Alice is the one. However it ends, however I fall, I at least have that. But Edward hasn't even made it that far yet. He's never held anyone in his arms that he couldn't bear to let go of. Nevermind the struggle of _keeping_ love — Edward has never even _found_ it. And as I think these things, and as Edward hears them as clearly as if I had spoken them aloud, I feel a swell of emotions that rarely ever arise in Edward's stormy, impenetrable heart: Insecurity. Loneliness. Despair.

I don't tell him that he'll find someone. I don't offer encouraging words, or encouraging smiles, or even the slimmest possibility of hope. It isn't in my nature to be optimistic. It was Alice and Alice alone who gave me that. Without her, not a whole lot seems possible. But I do meet his gaze with the kind of frank honesty that I know he appreciates.

"If a man like me," I say, gesturing loosely at my scars "—a man who has murdered, and destroyed, and hunted, and lied, and sinned a thousand times... If a man like me can find love, even for the briefest moment, then anyone deserves a chance."

Edward deliberates this silently, and —not for the first time— I wonder what the Cullens must think of me. Scarred, monstrous, bloodthirsty Jasper, showing up at their doorstep with Alice. Alice, who is all but an angel of light. I wonder how they feel when they watch her chattering on animatedly, smiling and laughing as if she hasn't a care in the world, tied to the hand of solemn, uncooperative me. To them, Alice and I probably look like the most horribly mismatched couple in history: a butterfly in love with a moody old unpredictable lion.

"I know you all think I'm not good enough for Alice—"

"Not all of us," Edward corrects firmly, snapping out of his own dark thoughts. "Just me. And only— _only_— when you contemplate leaving her. If you could hear her thoughts, Jasper, if you knew how desperately she loved you, you could never bring yourself to believe that walking away would do her any good."

To that, I say nothing, and wordlessly, the two of us pick back up into a run, leaping over the fallen rocks and into the luminous, landscape of snow. I know that someday, far along into the future, if Edward ever falls in love with a woman who is capable of loving him back, he will see. And when he does, he will finally understand what I've said this night, not just on the logical level of a mind-reader who knows everything about everyone, but on the level of a man with the mixed of emotions of fear and love. He will know why I spend my days half sick with terror that Alice will one day leave me, and half desperately hoping that she would. For our kind, the desire to love and the compulsion to protect all too often go hand-in-hand.

And rarely ever do they agree.

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**A/N: **I've always wondered about Jasper's decision to stay behind when Alice went after Bella in New Moon. This conversation between Edward and Jasper is my answer to that. I think out of anyone, Jasper would understand and respect Edward's reasons for leaving Bella. Edward managed to do what Jasper always struggled with, but wasn't actually capable of: walking away from the woman he loved in order to protect her.


	13. A New Life

**A New Life**

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The town that Maria leads us into is eerily silent and tranquil, like a snow-covered graveyard under a milky moon. The people asleep in their beds may have felt the temperature drop suddenly, and may have noticed the odd white light streaming through their curtains, but no one is awake to see the peculiar snowstorm in July as it lays a fresh sheath of lace over the dry summer grass. The only light in the entire town is coming from the local pub, where a group of drunken men laugh behind two frosted windowpanes, not even realizing that the world outside has changed. Maria stops just at the edge of the yellow light coming from the pub, and turns down a narrow alley into the cobblestoned town square. A fountain with a cement statue freezes over as we approach.

I look around at all of the darkened windows and feel a stab of grief. I know that at least two humans will be dead before Maria and Second walk away from this place, and the very thought of it makes me sick to my stomach. I want to scream out a warning, ring the church bells above the clock tower until everyone is awake. I've heard Jasper speak of "hunting grounds" and "prey" before, but to witness it with my own eyes is a different thing entirely. To me, it is appalling that they could even contemplate murder while walking through this sleeping town. But to them, it is simply a way of life — they are two bickering fishwives picking out human victims as easily as haunch of meat at market.

Second inhales deeply and licks his lips. "Delicious. I think I'll go back to that pub and ask the barmaid for a pint."

"No," Maria snaps at him, the way someone would chastise an over-eager dog. Her hand is still clenched around my arm painfully, but she releases me and shoves me toward Second in one quick motion. I fall against his chest and feel my wrists pinch together as he grabs them and holds me away from him like a piece of garbage. Maria looks on in disgust. "You wait here, since you're so attached to the little nymph, and keep an eye on her."

"Ex_cu_se me?" Second asks coldly.

I expect Maria to bristle at his tone, but instead she turns to him with a sparkling smile, an enchanting smile, and gestures toward him flirtatiously. "Well, we can't all go, can we? You get territorial when you feed. I'll dine first, _mi vida_, while you watch her for me, and then I'll do the same for you. A favor for a favor, yes?"

The guise of her charm is brittle and ugly to my eyes, but only because I know too much about her to find it lovely. If I were a man who knew nothing, those words and looks and graceful gestures would have me fascinated, if not bewitched. Jasper used to tell me stories about how easily Maria could tell lies and enchant a room full of love-struck soldiers, but I hadn't believed until this moment, until watching her switch from livid jealousy to smiling persuasion in half a heartbeat. Even Jasper, who would have been able to feel the dishonesty in her aura, would have hard time turning away from her if she shook her dark curls over her shoulders like that and smiled that glittering smile.

The dangerous chill in Second's eyes warms to nothing more than a disgruntled pout. "Anything else?" he asks spitefully. "Would you like me to shine your shoes while we wait? Pick up your dry cleaning?"

I've been checking the future on and off for hours now, but as the two of them stare each other down, a vision comes to me unbidden. I can feel the lower-half of my body go numb as my head swims, and the present drains out of me like a rush of water. The first image that comes to me is Jasper's face, so familiar and dear to me in this moment of utter loneliness that I can feel a sob working in my throat; he looks the way he did when I saw him for the very first time years ago: wounded, searching, determined. The set of his shoulders and the sight of his honey blonde curls falling into his eyes makes my chest ache with longing. Even if his eyes are ruby-red instead of amber, he is still mine. He is mine the way he was all those years ago, before I had ever even touched his hand.

He is running along a snow-capped ridge with Edward, and the two of them are charging over the dark landscape like a pair of mountain lions. On their left, I can just barely make out the speckled amber lights of small towns and villages lining the foothills of the mountains — one of which is the small town which we are standing in now. Because of the angle of the moon, I know they are not far behind us time-wise. Maybe an hour, maybe less than an hour. And in the vision there is a sudden twinkling and a raise of very loud noise. The lights of the township below flicker on as if the people have all been startled out of sleep.

Melting snow. Fluttering paper. Fire. Smoke—

Second snaps his fingers in front of my face, yanking me out of the vision abruptly. "Stop that, would you?" he mutters. "God, you freak me out."

Maria is staring at me again, the way she often does, with a hard penetrating gaze that seems to pick all the nuances of my mind apart. I know now that I must have been out of it for too long, asleep in the vision when I should have been awake to answer some demanding question of hers. She lingers at the edge of the cobblestone square, the fabric of her skirt gathered between two fingers, poised to hunt but unwilling to leave. I look away from her and study the snow beneath my feet. She is dangerously close to figuring out what Second has been trying to hide all this time, and a very large part of me is afraid of how violently she will react.

Second gestures at her irritably. "Well, what are you waiting for? Go, go, and make it quick. Her coven may have been happy to put up with these mental episodes of hers, but I don't want to have to play babysitter."

Maria gives a satisfied sniff and turns, deeming me inconsequential. I study her as she saunters away, and think that to the average drunkard human tottering down the street at this hour, she would probably look like a goddess. Even wet and muddy, she still moves with a certain kind of sensual grace, her damp skirt swishing over the snow like a feather-duster. I try not to think about how she will smile at her victim, or what his face will look like when he beholds her standing there in the shadows, with glowing red eyes and skin whiter than the falling snow. I try not to imagine the way she must have smiled at Jasper, the night she stole his life.

Second releases my wrists as soon as Maria disappears from sight. He strolls across the square and sprawls out on a snow-covered bench, all cavalier relaxation and confidence. I stay standing where I am, my arm still smarting from where Maria had grabbed me, my wrists still sore from where Second had pinched them together.

"I don't understand you," I say, a little harsher than I mean to.

He turns his head toward me, and his mouth tips into a winning smile. "You're not meant to understand me, Lovely. We men like to keep ourselves mysterious."

"Why are you helping me?"

"I'm not. I'm helping myself. My lying tongue just happens to benefit us both at this point in time."

I frown back at him in silence. I don't feel comfortable trusting someone who prides themselves on lying, nor someone who could so easily betray a lover. Second has the ability to change himself, chameleon-like, to suit his own needs, which is a dangerous trait in someone you're looking to trust. His careful addendum of '_at this point in time_' is not lost on me. For now, it suited him to keep my talent hidden from Maria. But that could change at any moment, and we both knew it. "I thought you were a couple," I say finally. "You and Maria."

"We are. We _were_." Second turns two darkened eyes on me like arrows. "But you don't love someone like Maria without getting burned. She doesn't live by the rules of relationship; she's passion uncontained. One minute, you're fighting for a cause side by side, in bed together every night, making future plans as if forever is the only option... and the next, she's selling you out to the enemy. Offering you up like a sacrificial lamb."

He says this with last part with such venom that I get chills. It is clear enough that Maria betrayed him first, but he doesn't elaborate on what she did, and I feel afraid to press him. "Is that—" I glance around and lower my voice. "Is that what _this_ is about?" I ask, gesturing to the stolen money lining the pockets of my wool coat.

Second gives me that same devilish smile again, the one that makes me feel like he's hiding his true feelings. He veils himself behind a guise of charm too, just like Maria, and the deceptiveness of them both makes me ache for Jasper, and for my family. For people who say what they mean and are who they are, even if it's wrong sometimes. For people who never pretend to be anything other than what's real. Jasper never smiles unless he means it, never laughs unless he has something to truly laugh about. I don't like this false coin of pretension and charm. It makes me feel hollow and lonely, like the only audience member in a never-ending play.

"The money," Second tells me quietly, "is about a lot of things. None of which I expect you to understand. But sooner or later Maria will tire of me the way she tired of all the rest. And she doesn't just discard her lovers— she kills them."

"So you're running away? Like Jasper did?"

"Yes and no." He pauses awkwardly, and looks down.

"Be honest," I implore. "Please. I'm so sick of all the pretending."

Second smiles faintly at my childish request. "The truth is she didn't just hurt me. She ruined me. And I'll be damned if I let her get away scot-free. What kind of man would I be if I didn't make her pay for what she took from me?"

I think of Jasper again — of his slow, gentle smile. I think of the way he loves to read, and how content he is just to hold me and watch the sunset. "As far as I know, revenge never made anyone happier," I say to Second. "Or a better man. What does it matter what Maria took from you? Get it back on your own. Build a new life. Get away from the wars and the fighting — don't just make a new war out of your own need for vengeance."

He plays with the hem of his jacket, and for the first time in our acquaintance, he actually looks a little vulnerable. "Maybe I don't want a new life. Maybe I just want her," he admits quietly.

His blasé expression fades to a pained wistfulness, and I suddenly understand the reason behind Second's unnecessary actions: he loves her. He loves Maria and she flat out betrayed him and broke his heart. I stare at Second's handsome face with new comprehension, and think that however clever and scheming he may be, he is a fool indeed to have fallen in love with a woman who wasn't even capable of loving him back. If Maria did have a heart buried in all of that ambition, it would take much more strength than Second possessed to carve it out and breathe it back to life.

"If I had it my way," Second continues slowly, "Maria and I would live the way you and Jasper do. Minus the animal-eating, of course— the mere idea of that disgusts me. But definitely no more battles and no more territories." He frowns. "The problem is, she's already shown me how much she values me. Or how _little_, to be honest. And it isn't enough. She'd rather see me die than give up Monterrey. I don't even want to ask."

He straightens up on the bench and turns to me with sudden inspiration. "Can you tell me what will happen? Can you see the future if I ask it of you?"

I picture Maria's cold smile and gleaming eyes, and already know that Second's dream will never come to pass. Whatever his future is, I don't want to see it. "I'm sorry," I say, and swallow down the weightless feeling of another vision before it can take me. I look down at his unhappy face and feel suddenly afraid for him. "Where will you go?"

He shrugs. "It doesn't really matter, does it? Long as it's not here. I'm making my own way now, before she can even think to drop me."

I open my mouth to respond, but Second abruptly puts a hand up to stop me and turns his head to the right, listening. The warm scent of blood reaches us far before Maria does: human blood so unlike the taste of bear and whitetail deer that my throat blisters in response. Very, very faintly I can hear the quiet click of a high-heeled shoe on the cobblestones leading to the square, and we can hear her pause as if to eavesdrop on our silent conversation. Second says nothing, and neither do I, though both of us cautiously look away from one another. And after a short moment, Maria gives up and strolls back around the corner toward us.

The smell of blood curls into my lungs like tendrils of fire, and Maria daintily wipes at the corner of her mouth with one pale hand. "There. That wasn't such a long wait, now was it?" she asks tauntingly. Her vivid red gaze takes in Second's reclined position on the bench, my crossed arms, and the careful way we're avoiding each other's eyes. "You haven't been trying to take liberties with our captive, have you, my dear? You know how I feel about that."

Second stands to his feet. "Are you done?" he snarls. "I'm thirsty."

"Yes. Go. Feed," she sighs, and then turns back to me with a dark smile. "I'll make sure little Alice stays where she belongs."

Second doesn't need to be told twice. He immediately blends in with the cool blue shadows of the square and disappears without a whisper of sound — perhaps on the way back to the pub, where a pretty barmaid will serve a dark-eyed stranger a pint he'll never drink, and find herself up against the wall of the alley minutes later, tipping her head back for a kiss while he surreptitiously caresses the pulsing vein in her throat. The first pinch of pain would be like a shock of electricity on a stormy day, half-surprise, half-pleasure, half-pain. And then fear, nothing but fear, because she can feel the venom sliding through her body and the sudden violent intent of his mouth.

Maria and I face each other in a stand-off for a full five minutes, measuring each other with silent glances that say everything. The ghost of Jasper stands between us like a barrier: my anger and her jealousy, both building up to something that neither one of us will be able to control. I watch the snowflakes settle on her dark hair and think of the tremendous guilt that Jasper carries on his shoulders — guilt over crimes that this woman's ambition drove him to commit. And yet, she still has the audacity to stare back at me challengingly, arrogantly, as if she was always the better woman and I just acquired Jasper's love out of sheer, arbitrary luck.

After awhile, she sniffs in indifference, casually sweeps her skirt to the side and folds herself into a sitting position on the bench Second vacated, crossing one leg over the other. The toe of her high-heeled shoe, mud-stained and scuffed, points at me accusingly. This small amount of movement sends another hint of blood moving through the freezing air, and I wonder what she must have done to get the scent on her, and if she had done it on purpose just to offend me. She watches me press my lips together, and smiles in satisfaction.

"Have you ever tasted human blood?" she asks pointedly.

"Have you ever tasted _animal_ blood?" I shoot right back.

Her smile turns into a grin, and she settles backwards into the bench. "You know, I don't think you're as weak-minded as Second is making you out to be. I don't think you're helpless at all." She taps her fingers thoughtfully on the wrought-iron arm. "But I do believe that he _wants_ me to believe that you're helpless. Now, why would that be? What would he gain from that sort of manipulation?"

I try to look as indifferent as possible, but the stolen money lining my coat-pockets makes me feel like I've been weighted with stones. "I don't know."

"He's a handsome man, I suppose. Charming, in his own way when he manages to keep his mouth shut. And to him, I imagine you'd be a prize of some sort. You are Jasper Whitlock's mate, after all. And my enemy. There's quite a lot of prestige in that."

A chill snakes down my spine at this poised, apathetic warning. I can see where she's going with this, and I can also see the danger in it. Her voice is light, as if this is a laughing matter, but her glinting red eyes show no sign of good humor. She thinks I'm moving in on Second, that I'm "stealing" him the same way I "stole" Jasper. To me, the mere idea of this is ridiculous — no one could ever take Jasper's place in my heart, least of all Second. But to Maria, a woman borne to a life of suspicion and betrayal, the notion of me as a slick-tongued seductress who exists only to steal the hearts of her soldiers was not that inconceivable.

I speak as gently and truthfully as I can. "Second loves you."

Maria stares at me blankly for one split second, then tilts her head back in a laugh. "If you're looking to dodge suspicion Princess, you'll have to come up with a much better lie than that."

"He does, Maria. He loves you," I repeat, this time more firmly. _God only knows why_. If this is how she reacts to the idea of love — uncontrollable laughter and disdain, I feel even more afraid for Second than I did before. It would be impossible to love a woman like this, impossible to show tenderness to someone who knows nothing of loyalty or good. At the very least, she would use him like a toy and throw him away the moment she grew bored. I cross my arms. "This isn't the life that Second wants, you know that, right? But he sticks around anyway. Why would he do that, if not for love?"

The laughter dies in her throat, and I can see that I've gone too far. "You are shamefully naïve," Maria spits out at me, snarling with contempt. "People like Second and I don't fall in love. Emotions are a handicap."

I nearly stomp in exasperation. "So you're just going to continue on like this? Betray each other? Hurt each other? Not even chance it?"

She turns away from me. "There is no chance. There is no love. There's only survival, and power— and if only one of us can have those things, then it's going to be _me_."

Despite her jaded words, her voice is too stained to be believable. Through the falling snow, I can just barely make out her profile, and when I see her lips tremble, I almost _almost_ feel sorry for her. But I can't bring myself to feel empathy for her, because I can't even decipher who the real Maria is: the demon Jasper ran away from, the lover who laughs at the idea of actually being loved, or the terrified woman before me who hides behind a hot temper and glittering smile. She and Second are probably going to end up killing each other, and I'm going to be stuck right in the middle of their unnecessary, invisible war.

The two of us stay silent until the smell of blood sweeps over the square again. I glimpse Second's eyes before any other part of him: such a bright, shocking shade of red that it makes me gasp and put a hand to my mouth. He is harried and disheveled, and both his jacket and the shirt beneath it are soaked in human blood. Accustomed to the neat, spotless hunting tactics of Carlisle and Jasper, this obvious evidence of brutal murder shakes me to the core. What had he _done_? How many humans had he _killed_? But Maria couldn't care less about the blood smeared all over him or the wild look in his eyes. She only glances at the clock below the church bells.

"That was quick," she says suspiciously. "That was _too_ quick. You did bury the bodies, didn't you? Hide all traces?"

He gives her a look. "Please. I'm not exactly an amateur. I know what I'm doing."

Maria stands up from the bench and brushes the snowflakes from her skirt. "We can't afford to take chances. The Volturi—"

"I _know_," Second snaps. "I took care of it."

Maria purses her lips for a moment, as if debating his trustworthiness or not. As if debating much more than that. She doesn't mention what I told her, and doesn't mention what she said in reply, but I can see in her eyes that she's weighing the risk of taking a chance. If she senses Second's sudden watchful stillness or saw the way I worriedly put my hands to the pockets of my coat, she says nothing. She only darts a look at the horizon, where the white mountains loom in the distance, glowing under a low-hanging moon.

"Fine then," she agrees carefully. "Let's carry on, yes? I want to get to Monterrey in time to prepare."

***

Lance Gundmunson wasn't quite as drunk as he would have to liked to be, but he was drunk enough to scrabble at the doorknob of the pub like a blind man before falling out the door with a round of laughter and anti-climatic belch. He rolled onto his back and watched the sky spin for a minute, wondering what the white flecks hitting his face were all about, and why it was so God-rotting cold. Then he lumbered to his feet, shivered a bit, and laughed once. "Snow," he slurred, foolishly trying to snatch at the snowflakes with his hand. "I'll be damned."

Still chuckling, he lurched across the white-covered street heading home. Suzanne was gonna kill him. She was probably waiting up with her curlers on, her jowls pinched together in that wifely snarl of hers that made him want to waltz straight back to the pub. That green night-mask thing she wore to bed was scariest goddamn thing he'd ever seen.

When he saw the first smear of red beneath him, he thought it was a shadow. He stumbled over it and looked over his shoulder when he passed, because even to his soggy, over-saturated brain something seemed a little wrong. Then he looked forward again and blinked. In the middle of the street, lying head-to-toe like a reel of uncooked sausage-links, was a line of bodies. Five, maybe six, all dead, looking very much as if someone had dragged them out of the houses along the street one by one, and stacked them there like a breakfast plate at Harry's.

Lance gulped, pitched to the side, and vomited in the red-stained snow. And then, his legs wobbling with terror and drunkenness, he ran helter-skelter back to the pub.

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**A/N:** My analogies were absolutely out of control in this chapter. _Out of control. _I couldn't stop. It was like a compulsion. But it made me laugh upon editing, so I kept most of them.

I had some incredibly insightful reviews for the last chapter — especially Scorpio21. It's amazing when people take the time to not only read what's on the surface, but to also read between the lines.


	14. Footprints

**Footprints**

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I am running along the icy edge of an overhanging cliff when I feel it: a great roll of fear. The emotion is not the normal sort of fear — not the fright that comes when someone is startled by a loud noise or skittish horse. This is _terror_, the kind of fear that comes when confronted with such horror that it seems to tear apart the very fabric of reality. It rides side-by-side along with war and natural disasters; it glints on the knife-shine of a murderer in the dark. Paranoia, insanity, panic, chaos. These terrible feelings surge up from somewhere below, building as the panic spreads like a disease across the darkened valley. It is so strong and so instantaneous that I stumble to a halt.

Edward stops too, and we meet each other's eyes for a moment of mutual dread. "Look," he says, pointing as the speckled amber lights below flicker and increase in number. I don't have to explain the emotions roaring through the valley; he can hear it in my thoughts just as clearly as I can feel it in my heart. "It has to be Maria."

Without any spoken communication of a plan, we both dash to the left along the ridge toward a trickling pathway of snow that leads sharply down. It is so steep that we slide most of the way, nearly tumbling head-over-heels at the vertical drop. And when the land changes from mountain to forest and the ground flattens out beneath us enough to grab a foothold, both of us burst into a run. Edward charges ahead of me, and races through the moonlit trees so fast that I can barely see him, his figure flicking in and out of shadow with every step. I can hear urgent church bells ringing in the distance, warning the few humans still asleep in their beds.

As we grow closer and the emotions grow stronger, I wade through them impatiently, searching for Alice's familiar aura. Second's snowstorm may have masked their tracks and their scent, but no tricks or strategies could shield her heart from my senses — I know it better than I know my own. But after a few minutes of desperate searching, I still feel nothing; not Alice's bright aura of love and hope, and not the grasping ambition of Maria either. Instead, there is only a wall of suspicion and vengeance; building higher and higher with every voice that shouts out in anger. The church bells peel one last time before echoing into silence, and a furious wave of dissention seeps over me.

"A murder," Edward says softly, slowing to a sudden walk as we approach the outskirts. "They've just discovered the bodies."

"Bod_ies_? More than one?"

"Six."

I turn to him sharply. Six bodies? Even one human body left uncovered would alert the attention of every vampire in the vicinity once the news of it got out to the press. We know well enough to recognize the mark of our own kind. But six bodies... that would undoubtedly catch the Volturi's attention. Not only would it be more difficult to cover up the truth, but it also had much more dangerous connotations. Six was not a meal, it was a massacre — the kind of carnage left behind when a newborn army was on the march.

Next to me, Edward nearly chokes. "An army?"

I study the area around us and frown. _No. Not an army. The bodies fit, but nothing else does. It's too quiet, and too empty. The other signs are missing._ In the past, when I returned to Monterrey from a reconnaissance mission, I could always smell the mansion far before I came anywhere near it. The smell of a vampire army was unmistakable: The sharp odor of dozens of different newborns mingling with the sweetness of human blood from their messy, untrained kills. And the lack of grace and stealth would have been evident too; smashed lights, broken doorways, windows that had been broken and slithered through in their craving for blood. Not even Second's masking weather could hide the stench and tromping disorganization of one of Maria's armies.

"Let's take a look at the bodies, then," Edward agrees. "Maria might not have been involved at all."

We creep through the frightened town as carefully as possible. Already the humans are on a witch hunt with every light blazing, and eyeing the surrounding shadows with far too much suspicion. As if the sight of winter in July wasn't to befuddle and alarm them, they now have a murderer to contend with as well. The panic has reached a fever-pitch level, and terror jabs into my chest like needles with each new human who awakes and finds the world turned on its side. Edward follows me up a fire escape to the steepled roof of the church, and together we leap across the houses, pubs, and businesses to the center of activity.

In the snowy street below us, a crowd of humans rings a pile of head-to-toe bodies stretching down the center line. The first two have the stark-white look of humans who have been completely drained of blood, but the other four are still curiously pink — they hadn't even been fed on. Instead, four throats had been slashed with an identical, no-nonsense cut, and lines of blood crisscrossed the snow where they had been dragged from their homes and placed in the street with the original victims. These last four were completely unnecessary deaths; humans who had been killed for either the fun of it, or as a means of strategy. Not being an optimist, I naturally assume the latter.

"Maria?" Edward asks me.

Try as I might I can't imagine that she would do something like this. She would have either left the bodies in their beds as a sick surprise for their families, or disposed of them in the woods. This kind of strange, nonsensical display wasn't in her nature. "No. No, it doesn't feel like her."

"Second, then?"

"Maybe," I say slowly. "I don't know. It feels wrong somehow. Something feels wrong."

I close my eyes and inhale, trying to pick apart the scents in the air. The smell of blood is first and foremost, so overwhelming that it makes my hands tremble. If the blood had been fresh instead of the frozen, congealed mess before me, I might not have been able to resist the panicked humans milling around in the streets with their pounding hearts and flushed cheeks. But it is not the pumping veins or warm human skin that alerts my attention and makes me sit up straighter on the rooftop, my hands clenching the snowy eaves with sudden urgency.

Beneath the stench of blood, just under the newest layers of wind and snow, there is the tiniest strand of sweet spice — just a hint. The telltale scent of our kind. Two things about this immediately strike me as ominous. One, the scent doesn't belong to Alice, Maria, _or_ Second. And two, it is very, very recent. Within ten or twenty minutes.

I whip around to stare at Edward. "You said there was another vampire? A third?"

Having heard my thoughts, Edward lifts his head and gazes around at the dark rooftops with equal alertness. "Their tracker, yes. Actaeon. But they killed him before entering Calgary. Tore him apart and burned the pieces. So, whoever this is, it can't be him." His voice lowers slightly — the very shadows around us seem to be listening. "Is it another soldier of Maria's?"

I inhale again, deeper this time, trying to grasp at the faint tracing before the wind sweeps the evidence away for good. "I recognize the scent," I say cautiously, wishing to God that I didn't. Because emotion is inherently attached to all of my memories, the scent of this vampire kindles a burning of foreign violence and fear within me. He is male, I know that much. And definitely not a newborn. The images that float back to me are of blood, shining diamond skin, and warm Southern rain, each an identical snapshot of the many territory wars I had fought for Maria. "I remember him from one of Maria's wars. So either he's one of her soldiers or one of her enemies."

Edward laughs humorlessly. "Is there a difference?"

_Very little. _"Someone else is tracking her too, then," I say needlessly, glancing at the snow-covered rooftops and quiet hills. "Or trying to, anyway."

There is a little murmur of interest below us and heads turn as someone shouts that they found another body — someone left murdered in their bed for their family members to find. Edward and I crouch lower when the humans gaze around in wild suspicion, yelling out nonsense about the devil and the end of the world. More than one starts to weep, and the holy terror that ripples through the crowd makes the back of my neck prickle with fear. This will be all over the papers in the morning. All over the wire. All over the country. Edward looks over at me. "Then why would Maria do this? Wouldn't it be a red flag for anyone trying to find her?"

"Maybe Second is going rogue," I say, standing to my feet. "Or helping Alice from the inside." I had felt very little compassion or kindness from him when we first met, but Alice's sweet spirit could have easily turned his heart. That, in conjunction with any sort of frustration over Maria's dealings, might be reason enough for him to switch his allegiance. But far more likely than that was the option that Second was manipulating the situation for his own benefit. This massacre could have been his way of leaving a breadcrumb for someone he knew was following.

Edward frowns at my thoughts. "So the third vampire...?"

I turn. "We'd better find Alice before he does."

***

Even though I am fully expecting it, I am so used to the cold flecks of snow against my cheeks that I am startled when it finally stops. I deliberately avoid Second's eyes, and turn my face up to the sky. A cold violet glow is lighting the horizon — dawn creeping over the hills and casting silhouette shadows in the icy leaves of the trees above. A few stray snowflakes swirl down through the color, but the thick white clouds have dissipated almost entirely, leaving behind smooth streaks in the sky like lines of discarded wool. The wind dies down to a mere ruffle of movement, stirring the short hairs on the back of my neck, and skittering the last layer of snow across the barren landscape.

Maria notices it only a moment after I do. She halts instantly, and puts a hand out to test the temperature of the air. Trembling with anger, she whirls around to face Second. "What's wrong with you?" she demands. "What happened to the snow?"

Striding next to me with his hand clamped on my elbow like a bear-trap, Second affects a look of bewildered concern. "It— I don't know," he stammers, and when Maria puts her hands on her hips in disbelieving fury, he gets defensive. "I _don't know_!" he repeats on a snarl.

"Well, fix it!"

Second immediately stares down at the frozen ground, his eyes focused in an intense portrait of concentration. Maria lifts her face to the sky again in expectation, but nothing happens. The sun begins to crest the far-off hills and the clouds turn pink on the edges with the coming light, but the air remains summer-warm and snowless. Second winces momentarily, then glances back up at Maria with an expression of frustrated distress. The show is convincing. If I hadn't been expecting the lie, I would have believed it. "I can't," he tells Maria quietly. "I can't fix it. I don't know how. This has never happened before. I've never had to sustain a weather pattern this long."

I carefully say nothing.

The violent look on Maria's face is enough to make my stomach drop. Her eyes are wild, pits of burning poison. Her hand flashes out like a snake and latches onto Second's collar. "That whole vermin-eating coven is right behind us," she hisses through clenched teeth, "and are still _hundreds_ of miles outside of Monterrey. What the hell do you mean, you _can't_? Do you have any idea what Jasper will do to me if he finds us before we reach Monterrey?" she whispers. "To _you_? You had better get it together, and I mean _now_."

"Are you deaf? I _can't_," Second bursts out, running a hand through his soaking wet, misarranged hair. "I don't _know_ why it's not working." He heaves in a desperate breath. "And you can stop yelling at me about our problems — it's only making it worse."

Maria shakes her head in disgust, and turns away as if she can't bear to look at him.

"You see?" she asks me pointedly, her voice full of bitterness. "This is why you don't depend on others. This is why you never place your trust in anyone else." She points an accusatory finger in my face. "You feel safe enough with Jasper now, but what happens when he lets you down? What happens when he isn't useful to you anymore? What happens when you aren't useful to him_?"_ Her head twists up arrogantly. "You want to talk about love and fairytales and chances? Go read a children's book. The only person I can ever depend on is _me_. My choices. My actions. In the end, no one else matters."

She sweeps me one of her a triumphant scarlet-eyed glances, but I've had more than enough of her self-centered, jaded arrogance. Someone has to put this woman in her place, or she'll just continue blazing through life like a firebrand, stealing good men from their homes and families and creating wars over territories that don't matter. All in the name of what — control? Power? A guise for her own insecurities and fears? I've had enough, and I'm not afraid to say it. I lift my chin up like a soldier, like Jasper, and face her down with an equal amount of confident authority.

"Maybe if you had been a little kinder to Second in the first place, none of this would be happening at all," I say levelly. "Maybe it's your own damn fault. Did you ever think of that? Did you ever stop to wonder if maybe _you_ were the one who messed up?"

All of Maria's outrageous bravado disappears in a flash, instantly replaced by an anger so hot, so lethal, that I can feel it like a knife-wound in my chest. Her hands fall to her sides slowly, as if pulled down by strings. "What did you just say to me?"

At this quiet, deadly question Second tries to move me a step back. But I wrench away from his grip and stay put, my hands clenched against my chest. "If you want happy, healthy, willing soldiers, then you'd better learn how to lead with kindness and compassion, rather than just beating your soldiers into submission." I gesture at Second, who stares back at me in horror, probably wondering why the hell I'm dragging him into this. "This is your fault, Maria. No one else's. You've pushed Second to the breaking point, and now you're paying for it."

Maria stares at me for a long moment, white-faced and blank. Nothing exists in her eyes: not anger, not pain, not contempt. Just an odd emptiness that rattles me to the bone. I hold still and refuse to let my fear show — but this strange, emotionless side of her frightens me much more than her fiery indignation. This is a woman who could, and would, do anything.

Her gaze cuts to Second. "Shut her up before I kill her."

Second immediately claps a hand over my mouth, muffling my cry of outrage. I struggle against his grip, but he shakes me into submission, moving behind me and pushing me forward with his hand still clamped on my mouth. He turns his face so that his lips are resting right above my ear, and hisses at me to shut up. The movement is innocent enough, considering the circumstances, but I can clearly see that Maria doesn't like it. She rears her head back as if witnessing some atrocious act of debauchery, as if this has confirmed some unfounded belief. But she turns away again before I can accurately read her expression.

"Do what I hired you to do," she snaps back at Second, her gaze on the lightening horizon. "Or face your own consequences. If Jasper catches up to us before we get to Monterrey, I promise you I'll be the only one who walks away alive."

***

The landscape changes so rapidly that it feels like Edward and I are running through a watercolor painting depicting the melding of the seasons. A winter that melts into spring, a spring that unfurls into summer, a summer that warms into fall. The trees above us begin to drip with moisture, a rain that falls on our heads as thickly a summer storm, and the ground beneath our feet becomes sticky with leaf-strewn mud. Each footstep splashes down into a puddle, and the few remaining piles of snow sparkle where they rest in the shade. As the sun rises higher in the sky and the birds sing out in grateful jubilation, worry sinks into my stomach like a stone.

Second has obviously cut off his wintery talent; the snow stopped falling just as abruptly as it had begun. And since Monterrey is still hundreds of miles away, I doubt he is acting on Maria's command. This leaves very few options, none of which are favorable. Either Second is allowing someone to follow their trail and catch up to them. Perhaps an old enemy, perhaps a member of the Volturi guard — a danger for Alice either way. And the other option, the one that makes me sick with worry, is that Second has been killed, and likely Maria and Alice with him.

The mere thought makes me want to pitch forward and die right there in the mud, before I have to exist even a moment without her.

"I don't think that's the case, Jasper, I really don't," Edward says gently. "On a logical note, we're on high enough ground that we'd be able to see the smoke if there had been a bonfire."

I clench a hand against my stomach, and wonder how it's possible that one small word could evoke so much revulsion. _Bonfire: _red-orange light in a ring of oak trees, frantic newborns screaming as I hurl them into the flames, the stink of smoke and death embedded in the fabric of my jacket. I turn away from Edward, feeling nauseous. I don't want Alice to have to even witness such horrors, let alone experience them. But she's traveling with bad company, and anyone after Maria's head isn't going to stop and ask questions. Alice could be killed for nothing more than the simple fact that she's present when they track down Maria.

"You know," Edward speaks up hesitantly. "Alice is a lot stronger than you give her credit for."

My shoulders hunch in defensiveness, but I stare straight ahead at the melting snow and refuse to look back at him. I hate it when he says things like that. As if he knows Alice better than I do. I don't want to have to share my wife with Edward. I don't want him to know the inner-workings of her thought process, or the secret thoughts she hides from even me. As I glower with unreasonable anger, I can sense Edward's regret and sadness behind me. He doesn't know how to combat my protective jealousy. He just wants to be my brother and my friend, and I _know_ it, but I just can't seem to shake my years of being guarded and alone.

"I couldn't possibly know Alice as intimately as you do, Jasper," he says quietly. "I would never claim to. I only meant that your love for her causes you to be overprotective at times when there isn't any need for it." He says this last bit very firmly, and I know he's answering my unspoken question as well as my practical concerns. "Alice can hold her own."

Even as he says this though, I manage to search out his hidden fear. It's buried deep in the pit of his stomach, surrounded by a wall of determination and courage, but it's there. Not only fear for her life, but the darker fear of being alone. Underneath his logical resolve to find Alice and bring her home safe, he is every bit as afraid as I am. Both of losing her, and of the loneliness that the void of her existence would assuredly bring. Somehow this comforts me. It shows a little bit of humanity in the all-perfect Edward. It is easier for me to feel closer to his weakness than his infallibility; if nothing else, we are at least brothers in this: our fear, or loneliness, our flaws.

I glance over my shoulder at him. "You aren't worried then?" I ask, knowing full well exactly how fearful he really is.

He scowls at me. "You know, on the scale of invasiveness, I would venture to say that your talent is probably more annoying than mine."

"Don't sell yourself short, Edward. No one could be more annoying than you."

He shoots me a sardonic smile, and when I turn around to face the horizon again, I can't help but feel as though we've come to some silent understanding. Trust doesn't come easy for me. It has to be earned and built, and carefully maintained. There would always be a certain amount of tension between Edward and I, because I don't like to share anything that's precious to me: not my private thoughts, and certainly not Alice. But I know now, or at least I can begin to recognize, that Edward is not like Maria — he would never set out to destroy or steal the things I love. He only wants to help me protect them.

We cross a bend in the path and come out to a flatter, more open area of melting snow and mud, and Edward bolts ahead of me with a sudden exclamation. "Tracks!"

There in the snow before us, are three sets of footprints. They are leading off into the distance, one ahead and two close together behind, all three with the rushed strides of an all-out sprint. Maria, Second, and Alice, still together. Still alive. I can't help it — I fall to my knees in the wet snow and grasp at the only evidence of Alice's trail that we've managed to come across so far. The sight of her little footprints makes my chest feel as though it's breaking apart into fragmented pieces of relief. A breeze picks up, and the scent of sunshine moves across my face as gently as the touch of her hand. We're on the right trail. We're going to find her.

I burst up and into a run, with Edward close on my heels. The two of us careen around the another bend in the path, both of us irrationally hoping to find Alice there on the other side — even as both of our talents tell us it won't happen. But there is no one in the open expanse of snow before us, which glimmers like a turned mirror against the sun. And instead, both Edward and I stop dead and stare in horror. Crossing the line of three footprints was yet another set of tracks, heading east to west for higher ground in a hurry.

The other vampire had found them first.

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**A/N:** So, apparently I made an accidental joke in the last chapter. My friend Violet Emberlynn brought it to my attention that Second's use of the word "pint" when talking about the barmaid could be taken in two different ways. Being the Irish girl I am, I was only thinking about alcohol. But Violet Emberlynn thought Second meant blood — which didn't even _occur_ to me until she mentioned it. Some writer I am.

Next chapter: the "mystery vampire" is revealed. Any guesses?


	15. Rémy

**Rémy**

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The sun scrapes across the sky in a blinding gold ball, and burns off the few clouds that still linger overhead. All around us, the snowdrifts are sinking inwards, the glimmering puddles left behind are painfully bright against the glare of the sun. A line of footprints picks up in the mud behind us, so distinct and noticeable that a tracker couldn't possibly miss the sight of them. Far from Monterrey, this evidence of our whereabouts spells out Maria's doom, but Second is annoyingly buoyant as we tread through the a gnarled mountain pass and down into the trees. At times he whistles like a songbird next to me, swaying back and forth as if he hasn't a care in the world. "Do you think your boyfriend is still following us, dollface?"

I toss him a glare. "_Husband_."

Second waves his hand as if the word means nothing. "Boyfriend, husband, male escort, mime... Whatever. Is he still following us?"

"Yes," I say curtly.

His mouth curves up into a knowing half-smirk. "See anything interesting happen yet in those future visions of yours?"

From his gleeful, far-too-interested expression, I know exactly what he's talking about, and I am so disgusted by his heartlessness that I can barely bring myself to answer him. A vision had come to me just after sunrise, of Jasper and Edward on a rooftop overlooking a crime scene: six dead bodies lying face-up in the middle of a snow-covered street, frozen and blood-splattered, still dressed in their summer nightclothes. Four women, two men, all of them dragged from their houses in the middle of night and slaughtered by the nightmare walking next to me. Second's face is lit up with such smug curiosity that I have to look away. "Maybe."

Second hooks a finger beneath my chin and directs my face back around. "Don't play coy with me, honey," he warns lightly. "It doesn't suit you. Has he found the bodies yet or not?"

"Those were innocent people you killed, I hope you realize that."

He chuckles softly. "Oh, I hardly think that third woman was innocent. What kind of self-respecting woman wears high-heeled slippers to bed? Did you see them, with the sparkles and little tufts of feathers?" He turns to me with the same expression of mischievous cheer, looking more like he had just pulled a harmless April's Fools prank, and not butchered six people for absolutely no reason. The fact that he had paused long enough to admire that woman's footwear makes me feel sick. Did he notice the slippers before or after he slit her throat?

"Whatever my reasons, that little stunt benefitted you as well," Second continues softly. "Don't forget that. Because when Whitlock finally shows up, frothing at the mouth and raging with righteous anger, I'm going to need you to tell him how I helped you."

"I thought you were helping yourself."

He grins. "Can't I do both?"

Maria loudly clears her throat. She has stopped running and turned back to us, her hands on her hips as she waits for us to catch up. "And what are you two talking about so quietly and so closely?" she asks, her eyes bright with feigned interest. When her gaze settles on Second, her smile pinches slightly, but her voice stays pleasant and non-confrontational. "You'd think she was a hooker and not a prisoner, with the way you carry on."

Second rolls his eyes as if a liaison with me is the last thing he could ever be interested in. "Little Alice here was just voicing her opinion on our feeding habits, that's all," he says easily, another half-truth added to the growing pile of lies. His upper lip curls in disgust. "As if anything could be more vile than draining the blood from a tick-infested old grizzly."

Maria says something in reply, but her voice sounds distant and garbled to me. The melting snow around us shimmers, and I can feel myself sliding down into a vision, tumbling much too fast to try and stop it. A snapshot image of a vampire I don't recognize floats before me: a male with long gold-blonde hair bound at the nape of his neck — dirty, mud-streaked hair that hasn't seen a shower or a comb in a month. In the vision, he is looking at me, almost looking _through_ me, his eyes narrowed in bitter anger, his face contorted in torture. And even though he says nothing and does nothing, I know with intrinsic certainty that he will kill me. He will kill me, because I am there, and I am silent, and I am an unwilling part of Maria's charade.

Even more terrifying are the lighting-flash visions that follow: Melting snow. Fluttering paper. Thick, purplish smoke coiling up between the branches.

Jasper's wooden face as he collapses to his knees.

I claw out of the vision in terror, fighting with my own rubbery arms and legs. I feel like a child, alone in a dark room, the knowledge of what I had seen hanging over me like wraiths. I would die before Jasper could find me. I would never see him again. He would be alone, and in pain, with no one to hold his hand, with no one to calm the monster still hidden in his heart. And Jasper would never kill himself — I knew that with perfect certainty. He would _punish_ himself. He would assign himself a fate worse than suicide; locked up alone, starving, and motionless for years, centuries, ages... his own guilt crossing over him like chains.

"Jasper," I babble, blindly stumbling through the melting snow. My own death I could take. My own fate I could handle. But not this. Not him. "No," I whisper brokenly. "No, no, no, no, _no_."

"Keep _mo_ving," Second snaps, jerking at my arm. "Don't make me carry you."

But Maria stops with a sudden jolt forward, smelling the air with intense concentration. She whips around, lifts her head up, and cautiously moves around the next bend of the path, her fingers twitching at her side. We are in a dense forest of frozen-leafed oaks, with sloping hills on either side shadowing us from the sun. All around us is the sound of dripping — icy moisture from the branches falling in a cascade of plink-plink-plinks into the slushy puddles on the ground. In the center of the white, winding path, is boulder nearly as tall as the surrounding oaks, a massive stone that would look awkward and out of place were it not for the tall growth of bracken and dogwood at its base. Second and I both follow Maria's gaze, and look up.

The vampire from my vision is slumped there atop the boulder, so motionless that at first I think he might not actually be real. His fine clothes are filthy and torn, and his shoulders are curved inwards with the defeated slouch of a child who has been beaten and left to die. But his eyes, glinting out through limpid locks of wheat-colored hair, are burning black with hatred and awareness. He doesn't raise his head as we approach, or even blink — just continues to glare out malevolently, his eyes locked on Maria like a hunter's sight. When she stops before him and places her hands on her hips expectantly, he screws up his mouth in mournful rage. I have never seen another vampire look so defeated. Not even Jasper in his wildest moments of self-hatred and angst, had I ever seen this broken.

"Thirty Days," the stranger spits out suddenly, violently, in a thick French accent that ripples across the dripping landscape. His thin lips tremble with emotion. "You _murder_ my Colette, in cold blood, with no shame, and 'zey give you _thirty_ _days_? Thirty days while my Colette is dead and you are alive. Thirty days while I am sick with pain, and receive no payment for my loss. Thirty days while you run around 'ze countryside like a rat. Like 'ze whore of a rat."

I chance a look at Second out of the corner of my eye, and find his eyes wide in shock. Whoever this vampire is, and whatever he wants, he isn't a part of Second's plan. Second is every bit as astonished by his appearance as Maria is, and every bit as alarmed. He throws a glance over his shoulder at our muddy footprints, and turns back with an expression of horror. It hadn't occurred to him that when he changed the weather pattern again to allow Jasper to track us, someone else might have been looking for us too. And unlike Jasper and Edward, this livid French vampire is not likely to show Second any kind of mercy.

"No payment?" Maria asks sharply, regrouping from her initial surprise. She ruffles up her voluminous skirt until the entire length of her left leg is showing. A long jagged scar is visible across her thigh, where a strip of skin had once been torn away. "You've already taken your pound of flesh, Rémy. Or did you conveniently forget the fact that you have scarred me for life?"

"_I_ 'ave scarred _you_?" Rémy stares back at her in grief-stricken fury. He presses his hand to his chest and swallows down a dry sob that very nearly breaks my heart. "You 'ave taken from me 'ze one thing that ever mattered."

In his terrible pain, I can see Jasper, I can see myself. I can see anyone who has ever envisioned the nightmare scenario of forever losing the one they love. The man before me hasn't fed, hasn't showered, hasn't changed, hasn't mourned. He hasn't done anything at all except burn with this frightful, insatiable anger. The thought of revenge is the only spark of life left within — the only thing still holding his shattered existence together. _But what would it prove?_ I ask silently. W_hat would it matter?_ No death could bring back a life. No murder could revive a victim. Nothing in heaven, in hell, or any of the grey areas in between could ever erase this kind of pain.

Rémy chokes back a cry, and crumples down again, covering his head with his hands. They might have been together for years, for centuries, he and his Collette. They might have found each other on a miracle whim of chance: a stray scent in air, a fleeting vision of fate. But however beautifully or extraordinarily their love might have begun, it had ended. It had ended just as abruptly as the fragile lives of the hummingbirds and humans; immortality meant nothing, not to someone who had loved and lost. My eyes sting as I watch one of my own kind rock back and forth in misery, a mumbled string of French laments escaping his mouth. Both Second and I have to look away — this naked grief feels far too private to witness.

But unmoved and unblinking, Maria only drops the skirt of her gown and takes a breath. "Your loss has nothing to do with me," she says coldly. "You made the choice to love another in a life of war and fighting, and these are your consequences. Colette crossed the front line and I dealt with her the same way I would any other enemy. Don't blame me because your doxy of a mate was too stupid to stay out of the battle."

The level of callousness is surprising, even for Maria. If it had been me slouching on that boulder in grief, hearing those ruthless words, I either would have exploded in a murderous rage at her or sunk even further into the yawning pit of depression. But Rémy, centuries older and wiser than I, only draws back his shoulders and turns his head to stare at her — stare at her the way a parent would gaze at their disappointing, wayward progeny.

"You are 'ze same as you always were," he says ungenerously. "An impudent little whore with no manners and no class. You won't be satisfied until you 'ave taken everything from everyone. And still, you 'ave nothing. Still, you are _worth_ nothing."

Maria smiles pleasantly. "And you are an ugly, boring, old Frenchman who probably couldn't even satisfy his own mate, let alone a woman like me." She lifts her chin up. "If you have a problem with the thirty days I was allotted, then you can take it up with Felix and the Volturi. You were the one who ran sniveling to them in the first place. I'm sure you have their number."

"I 'ave already spoken to Aro himself," Rémy says flatly.

This ominous threat hangs in the air for a moment, and both Second and I look at Maria. Had the Volturi ever intended to give her a trial at all? If so, why would they have sent Rémy after her, knowing that he sought to take his own revenge? Maria is shocked by this turn of events, I can tell by the way her face wipes clear of all emotion, but if she feels fear at the implied danger, she doesn't show it. She only smiles to herself, wryly, a woman who has betrayed too many times to expect or even hope for anything different. "And?"

"I am free to take any form of restitution I choose. Without consequence."

Maria laughs without humor, and bites her lip in angry resentment and resignation. "Well, aren't you the favored one?" she whispers meanly, then shrugs. "As you wish. If you're that eager to join your French slut in hell, who am I to object?"

Rémy easily ignores this last-ditch effort to insult to Colette. He is past the point of provocation; he and Maria both know that he has won — that he can kill her now, with the Volturi's blessing. For the first time, his dry, angry eyes focus on Second and I. "And your followers?"

Immediately, Maria sweeps around until she's standing right in front of us, blocking the two of us from Rémy's calculating view. In my first moment of surprise, the optimist in me wonders if maybe her dormant conscience has finally come to life. Her body language and sudden tenseness make it seem as if she's actually trying to protect me. Then Second sniffs out a cynical laugh next to me, and I realize that Maria _is_ protecting me, but only because she knows exactly what will happen to her if I die right now — before the Volturi trial, and with a furious Jasper still hot on our trail. Typical Maria: forever plotting, even when her own life is at stake.

She shrugs apathetically. "The girl is no one. A tramp that Second picked up in the last town."

Rémy tilts his head until he can see me again, and takes in the full measure of me in an instant: my neat, modest clothing, the color of my eyes, my reluctance to be there, Second's hand clamped down the arm of my wool coat like a bear-trap. His gaze slides back to Maria skeptically. "As if I would believe anything that comes out of your lying mouth. She is 'ze one who matters, is she not? Why else would you 'ave taken her prisoner?"

I can see that both Maria and Second are poised to spit out a mouthful of lies. Both of them need me alive in order to get what they want from Jasper. But I speak up before either one of them can spin a story. "Maria kidnapped me in Calgary," I say quickly, and soften my voice at the ghostlike grief in Rémy's eyes. I need to say the next part gently, respectfully — not with the desperate grasping of someone who would use any excuse just to stay alive. "I had nothing to do with the Southern territory wars or the death of your wife."

My tender tone makes him stare at me with redoubled interest. "And who 'ave you been kidnapped from, little one?"

I feel a tug deep down inside of me, and know that this is my moment. This is the decision that I make to either die or live, based on what I tell this hollow-eyed vampire. I fight against my natural instinct to protect myself with a lie, and speak from the heart instead. I had seen enough lies from the two vampires beside me — selfish, unkind things that only serve to create a gap between the them. "My husband," I tell Rémy honestly, and I let all my love for Jasper creep into these two words. "He and my brother are right behind us, no more than a half hour away—" Maria looks at me sharply when I say this, but I am beyond caring.

"If Jasper finds me dead—" I break off and press a hand over my mouth, seeing again the empty, wooden expression from my vision. "Please. Have mercy. I can't bear the thought of him hurting the way you're hurting now."

It's enough. The snapshot vision of him glaring at me with intent to kill fades away and disintegrates, lost with a million other futures that I've seen but never witnessed, a million other fates that I had sidestepped by making a different choice. Rémy's decision changes. Whatever form of revenge he takes, it will not involve me. I can see it and Maria can too. And even though this was what Maria had wanted — even though she needs me alive in order to use me as a bargaining chip with Jasper, the fact that I did it on my own, without her manipulation and without her control, hits her hard. She sucks in a hard breath of hatred and bursts into bitter laughter.

"Is there anyone in this godforsaken world who isn't half in love with her?" she demands, yelling up as if the sky would have an answer. Her spiteful gaze flicks back to me. "Is that just what you do? Is that your _talent_? To make men fall at your pretty little feet by doing nothing more than being an insipid, doe-eyed little ninny?" The rage is building up in rapid rhythm with her steps toward me, gathering like the puddles of liquid light on the ground. "Because you're so innocent? Because you're so _good_? Because you're so mind-numbingly _perfect_ and I'm— what? A whore? A demon? Next to nothing beside you and your golden, untarnished image!"

The last two words are said in a banshee-like shriek that makes me flinch. Second releases his grip on my arm entirely and moves just a fraction of an inch away — a motion that very plainly says: _you're on your own_.

"Jasper be damned, I ought to kill you," Maria swears, still stalking toward me. "I ought to end it right here, right now, and let him find you in pile of ash."

Quicker, and with more finesse than I thought him capable of, Rémy leaps down from boulder and falls into an aggressive crouch in the bracken. Without the slouching of his shoulders and the hanging of his head, he is tall — almost as tall as Jasper, and built like a wiry sapling. His age shows in comfortable competence of his body, the fearlessness in his eyes. He has fought and killed for far longer than Maria has even existed. "Another act of war?" he demands of her. "Another husband left alone without his love, without apology, without justice? No! No one touches 'ze girl! It is you who killed Colette, and you alone will pay. I will accept no substitutions."

Maria drops into the same fighting stance that I had seen Jasper use during times of danger. Anger crackles around her like fire, like snapping bits of electricity. Rémy growls, and in response she hisses, a terrible snarling sound that contrasts horribly with the animated smile on her face. She tosses her hair back and gleams at him. "If you want your revenge, then you come and get it. I've got a date with the Volturi whether they want it or not, and you are just _wasting_ my fucking time."

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**A/N:** For the few of you who managed to guess right: pat yourselves on the back and feel validated! :) For the few of you who actually speak French and feel that I butchered your accent, I humbly apologize. Next chapter: VAMP FIGHT.


	16. A Clock is Ticking

**A Clock is Ticking**

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The thrill of a fight courses through me, hot electricity, an uncontrollable fire. At times, it isn't about ambition. It isn't about territory. It is about this: the moment in which two enemies circle each other with hard eyes and clenched fists, cold with the certainty that only one will survive. Our kind is dead by definition — walking corpses with skeleton shells for hearts. But here, in this moment, I am alive. I am alive, and I am awake, and I am crackling with a pulsing energy that will never be stopped or contained. It stretches on forever, this spliced fragment of time, and I inhale a deep breath and think: _this is all I live for. This is all I will ever be._

In the face of death and war, in the midst of this fierce combination of danger and glory, Jasper's little mate stands out alone — a pinprick of futile light among the awesome darkness. This moment holds no grandeur for her; she is too _good_ and too _pure_ to comprehend what it means to burn another living soul to ash. For her, this is terror, and nothing more — I can see it in the way she struggles against Second's grip, the way her yellow eyes shine with horror. "_Stop_!" she cries out raggedly, fighting against Second as he laughs. "You don't need to do this! What more do you want? What more could you possibly take? Don't you have enough?"

"It's never enough!" I scream at her, and in the wild ecstasy of adrenaline, I'm not even sure what that means. I only know that I want to block her out, extinguish her, and let the darkness take me. Whatever she's offering, whatever she's holding onto, I don't want it. I don't want anything that weakens me the way that she's been weakened, the way that Jasper was weakened — to cringe away from the searing ferocity of war, to taste nothing but remorse when the blood drips off my fingertips. I need this. I want this. I want everything. I will _take_ everything. And It's not enough, never enough. _This is all I live for. This is all I will ever be._

Second lifts his head to stare at me, but I don't dare meet his gaze.

I changed him alone, on a blue winter night in December; a decision made more out of compulsion than design. He was young and strong and handsome, I remember, and he crackled with a forceful energy that moved me — even drunk with tears running salty tracks down his cheeks. I changed him alone and I stayed with him there, just he and I on the ledge of an abandoned old bridge, with the sound of water rushing below us as it curved around a bed of jagged rocks. I remember the ticking of his tarnished old wristwatch as it counted down the seconds, and the breathless moment when the fiery pain of my venom subsided and his face began to relax. I remember that I had just reached out to brush a lock of dark hair away from his cheek when his eyes opened for the first time — brilliant red and searching for me.

I don't know why this memory comes back to me now, or why it makes my chest feel tight with pressure and pain, but I swallow it down and shake my head. I can't. I won't. I turn back toward death with the fearlessness that I am known for, and let everything else fall away. _This is all I live for. This is all I will ever be._

Across from me, with an expression so fiercely tortured that it makes me recoil, Rémy flicks a lighter across his thigh and sends the blaze flying. With a _whoomp_ of ugly sound, the dry brush beneath the boulder catches fire, spilling pungent black smoke sideways. It burns off the remaining snow and moisture, and spreads fast, lighting up the trees as the line of fire snakes around a splintered trunk. Rémy turns back to me, and I watch in fascination as his mouth works against a sob, even as his eyes narrow with intent to kill. His face is like a porcelain mask of tragedy and murder, two entirely different expressions painted on the same white glaze.

I laugh delightedly, and the untamed animal sound of it in my throat is so awful that even _I_ feel like cringing. "How polite! You even lit your own bonfire. Did Colette teach you that?"

Not the kind of man to dance around a fight, Rémy springs forward the instant I say Colette's name. I expect him to feint and come up behind me, but instead he simply rears his hand back and slaps the laughter right out of me.

Stunned, I have to blink once before my vision turns red with rage. I hiss like a stable cat and whip my claws back, going for his face. He grabs my wrists, but I spin out of his grip, duck, and flip him over my head. His body hits the ground with a splash and a grunt, and I am on top of him in seconds, my hands wrapped around his throat. When my nails pierce through his skin in ten separate punctures, I smile in triumph, and Rémy's expression changes. He growls much louder than I ever heard a vampire growl before, and bucks me right off over his head — pitching me straight into the fire.

I roll forward, and for one instant, I can feel the fire sear over my skin, so unbearably hot that it rips the air from my lungs. Engulfed in a prism of red-orange light, tumbling head over heels, my roll stops with an abrupt smack against the base of an oak. I am down for only a moment, the roar of the fire in my ears like a train engine, before leaping back to my feet and darting straight back through the flames. I come flying back out on the other side, my dress smoldering with embers and smoke, only half-concious of the scent of my own hair burning in singed ringlets around my face.

Rémy is just staggering to his feet when I snag him by the shirt collar. I fling him sideways, and he hits the face of the boulder so hard that it cracks. I fly after him, and bits of rock explode all around me in a burst of fire as I drive his body further into the impact crater.

Both of his hands clamp onto mine, and he pushes back against me using the boulder as leverage, sending us both crashing to the bed of fire on the ground. I hit hard enough to bounce back up, but Rémy slams me down again with one wiry hand, pinning me to the scalding hot forest floor. I fight him off with one hand and cover my face with the other as he tries to scrub my cheek through the mess of embers on the ground. When I finally manage to wrap my hand around the arm pinning me, I feel a terrible, gut-wrenching rip of flesh on my right thigh — a pain much hotter, much more violent than the flames closing in on my body.

"To match 'ze other," Rémy snarls, spitting out the remnants of my diamond flesh and smearing the back of his hand across his mouth. "Now you 'ave a set of scars, you impudent little whore. Think about 'zat before you die."

***

I spot the thick curl of smoke before Edward does — my pessimistic nature had me scanning the skies long before he ever lifted his head. At first, when I see the long column of black reaching up to the sunlight, I think I am hallucinating. It is my worst nightmare, the absolute worst thing that I could imagine happening: Alice burned alive in one of Maria's bonfires. It is so horrifying that it feels unreal to me: a twisted mirror-image interpretation of what could happen — a plastic warning label folded into the pocket of a plane seat in front of me. Then reality sinks in and I sink too, falling to my knees in the melting snow, watching in dumb horror as my world shatters.

It speaks to the depth of my despair that Edward starts to panic too. I can feel the cold waves of scattered nerves rushing out of him, even as he struggles to keep it together. "We don't know what it means—" he says, in a voice much too quick to be convincing. When I don't move, speak, or even think, he grabs my shoulder and shakes me hard. "Jasper! We don't know what it means. Get a hold of yourself."

How could I ever live without her? How could I even think that was possible? Suddenly the idea of leaving Alice for her own safety seems laughable, ridiculous. Not even watching her from a distance would be enough. I need her here with me. I need her. I _need_ her. And more — much more, she needs me too. No one could ever taste such a perfect love and walk away from it. Not for good. Not forever. Alice had changed me so deeply and so thoroughly that being on my own again would be like existing within the shell of a stranger's body. I no longer knew what life was without her. It wasn't that I had become a man I hadn't recognized. I had become the only man I wanted to be.

The column of smoke rises higher and higher, until it becomes all I can see: a dividing line in the sky between a life of love without Alice and an eternity alone. And as I stare at that smoke, as the dark, tenuous texture of it fills every splintered crack in my heart, I realize that there are no other options for me. It is Alice or nothing. It is my life with her or my life in void. How could I ever have even imagined that it could be anything but? I heave in a sputtering breath, and think that she may already be gone, that it may already be over. And straight on the heels of this, comes another chilling, mind-altering thought: _what would I do?  
_

_Oh God. What would I do? Where would I go? What would I do?_

I'm not even concious of being pulled to my feet until Edward shakes me back and forth and I stumble over my own feet.

"It won't come to that," he says firmly, and I can see that he is drawing strength from my weakness; he is setting aside his own panic in the face of my all-consuming dread. He is half-dragging me across the snow, forcing me to keep moving the toward the column of smoke, the place of terror, and the possibility of finding my only love in ashes. "Are you listening to me, Jasper?" Edward demands, heaving me forward into a run even as I stagger to the side. "It's not going to come to that."

"How do you know?" My own voice sounds like a stranger's. "How do you know?"

Edward presses his lips together on an emotion that I recognize as anguish, but doesn't say anything. And still, the smoke looms in the distance, rising higher and higher until it seems to snuff out the sun itself_. "Throw the curtains open before you leave, lover,"_ Maria used to say to me when she sent me out to the bonfires. _"I like to watch the smoke rise and know the job is done." _

And because the thought of surviving without Alice is so otherworldly unbearable, I focus instead on what I know. On what I can see, touch, and fight. I walked away from Maria and my bloody life with her years ago. Years. And yet, she still came after me. Still, she came after Alice. Out of spite, out of revenge, out of her own cursed selfishness. Hatred courses through me — bursting through the dry cracks that horror and shock have left behind. If Maria had killed Alice, if Maria was actually sick enough to send my love, my _life_, to the flames... not even murdering her in revenge would be enough. Nothing ever would be.

I feel my own aura darken slightly, like a flicker of candlelight weakening as the wick burns short. The monster inside of me begins to call for— no, _demand_— retribution, even if it means further damning my already tarnished soul. Even if the simple act of revenge would never satiate the grief. Even if it isn't what Alice would want or even approve of. I clench my jaw, and simmer with such violent thoughts that Edward looks over at me in alarm. I can tell that he wants to say something, but my black moods are far beyond what any of the Cullens would ever deign to descend to. And not even Edward, who fearlessly knows all and sees all, is uncertain how to handle me in this state.

And then, with a jolt that stabs clear through my heart, Edward's aura changes from fear to leaping, unbridled, animated joy. "Alice!" he breathes out.

He immediately halts and put his hands out to stop me too, listening. My head whips around in all directions, desperate to see what he sees, desperate to hear what he hears. I can barely bring myself to trust in my own talent, but the genuine hope shining in his aura makes me weak in the knees. "What?" I whisper. "Is she—"

"She's fine, she's fine," he tells me quickly, clapping a hand on my shoulder as I stand there shaking so hard that my teeth are chatter. "She's not in danger. The fire isn't for her. She— she's alive, and she's still with Maria and Second, and...." Edward looks legitimately puzzled. "Rémy! How strange. Rémy is an acquaintance from Carlisle's old days with the Volturi. He just contacted him actually, remember? To ask about Maria? I guess that's how he knew where to look for her. Rémy is attacking Maria out of vengeance. And—" he trails off, and an odd expression settles on his face. He turns slightly, like a predator catching a scent, and continues to listen.

The wait is unbearable. "And _what_?!"

"And we need to head east," he says, spinning around and taking off at a full sprint. "Alice is going to make a run for it."

***

I see it in the way he watches her, the way his body tenses every time she takes a hit. For all his talk and planning, Second is horrified by this — by the possibility of actually having to watch Maria die. Contemplating an act of vengeance and actually following through with it are two very different things, especially when it involves someone you love. I watch for Second's reaction when Rémy pins Maria to the ground in a blaze of fire, and see him look away as if it doesn't matter. But the hand he runs through his hair is shaking, and he's biting his bottom lip so hard that the muscle in his cheek is twitching. He doesn't want this anymore, I can see that clearly enough, but I can also see that he will stand by and let it happen.

Unless I give him a reason not to.

I check ahead to see the future again, and image that shines before me is so vivid and so powerful that my entire body tingles with joy. I gaze through the leaping orange flames, east to the other side of the fire, and draw a fist to my chest in restraint. _Jasper_. My chin trembles. Somewhere, through that hellish world of flames, smoke, and war, Jasper is waiting for me, roaring out my name as he sprints through the trees. A very small and righteous part of me hates what I am about to do. But if this one small lie is the difference between falling into Jasper's arms or leaving him to find me in ashes, then there is no choice. Jasper is worth the risk.

"Second," I say softly, just barely a whisper. "Rémy is going to kill her. He's going to kill Maria."

At my words, Second flinches, and lurches forward a bit. He takes in a deep breath, and his eyes follow Maria's furious movements with even more intensity. "You know this? From a vision?"

Because I can't bring myself to flat out lie, I merely nod my head. "You'll be free," I say with a trembling smile. "She won't ever be able to hurt you again. Everything you wanted to happen will happen—" I take a breath. "Unless you want to stop it."

He looks at me sharply.

"It's not too late," I say quietly, this time speaking from the heart. "If this isn't what you want— if you want a life with her instead, whatever that life may be— it's not too late. But you've got to try. You've got to take the risk. Because God knows Maria won't, and you're running out of chances."

Second stares at me for another moment, and then looks down and grows very still. I watch in future visions as his decision flips back and forth between two outcomes, an equal measure of love and vengeance balanced on the scale. Then the iron grip on my arm loosens— just slightly, and romantic in me swells with pride. I can't say that Second is a good man — too much has been done and said to label him as anything but a villain. But somewhere beneath the bravado and ice, somewhere beneath the monster Maria created and the fiend that already existed in his soul, he is a man who is capable of doing good things.

Without further debate or hesitation, Second abandons me. He leaves his duty behind for love's sake, and launches himself into the battle. Maria is down again, and Rémy is standing over her with outstretched claws, trying to pry off her head by digging his fingers into the hollow beneath her chin. Second growls like a baited bear and flies into Rémy with enough force to knock him ten feet back, straight into the crumbling boulder that looms above the fire.

I don't wait to see the outcome. I don't wait to see who lives and who dies. I turn heel and run like hell itself is chasing me.

I jump straight into the spreading fire and sprint east, Jasper's presence drawing me like a point on a compass. Distantly behind me, I can hear Maria shrieking, "You let her go?! You _let her go?!" _and I throw myself forward through a wall of burning timber, so fast that I nearly trip over my own feet. I see a snapshot of rage, and know at once that she will abandon her own fight with Rémy to chase after me. I have to find Jasper before Maria finds me; I have to make it into his arms before she bottles up all of that horrifying fury and comes screaming after me.

"Jasper!" I cry out in vain, knowing he won't hear me over the fire. "Jasper!" I leap over a burning log like a hurdle, and stagger to side when another tree falls in a barrage of embers and ash. I'm heading straight into the thick of it, straight into the hot, terrible heart of the fire, where it blisters so hot against my skin that think I might burst apart like glass shell surrounding a bomb. The need to be in his arms, the desire to feel him breathing beside me, outweighs every rational thought and every bit of careful planning. I scream out like my life depends on it, even as the smoke swirls into my lungs and makes me choke against the back of my hand. _"Jasper!" _

There is a rushing sound from behind me, and something hits me square between my shoulders so hard that I feel my own spine snap, and smash into the fiery ground face first. "Not so fast, Princess!" Maria hisses against my ear, one hand clawing into the back of my neck, the other locked on my arm.

The two of us tumble out of the fire and into puddled clearing with a splash, still kicking and scratching at each other like a pair of wildcats. All of my anger over Jasper, all of my frustration at being kidnapped, snaps to the surface and I snarl at her like I was born and bred to fight. My clothes are singed and smoking, and Maria's dress is nearly entirely disintegrated — when she snags me by the throat, I manage to reach down and claw the wound Rémy left in her right thigh, tearing at it until I think I might pry the limb away from her body. Then she knees me in the face and kicks me backwards, crashing me into a burning tree trunk. I leap to my feet just as Second jumps through the flames to appear at Maria's side, his face blackened with ash.

"Stop!" he yells at her. "E_nough_, Maria! The Volturi! The trial!"

But Maria is beyond listening. When I spin around to run for it, she grabs the collar of my coat and wrenches me back, and as gravity begins to shift beneath my feet, I know somewhere deep inside that she will murder me if she gets her hands on my throat again. In a move that Jasper had taught me once during a playful sparring session, I throw myself forward, twist at the waist, and whip my arms out my coat just as the fabric shreds apart.

I don't stop to see Maria's reaction. I spring forward at a run, and yell for Jasper at the top of my lungs, blinded by smoke and fear, my stomach churning with every kind of terror imaginable. But before I make it even ten feet away, I choke with a horrible inhuman garble as Second's hand clamps down on my mouth. My last cry for Jasper is muffled against his skin, and he reels me in from behind and slams me up against his chest, the pressure in his arms tight enough to crush me. He drags me back around to face Maria, breathing hard and triumphantly against my ear. "Liar, liar," he whispers viciously, and I can feel his cheek move up into a smile.

But Maria isn't smiling.

My wool coat is in a crumpled heap on the ash-strewn ground, and the stolen money that Second had stuffed in the pockets is flying up on the whipping wind from the fire. All three of us watch in horror as the neat stacks of bills lift up and fling backwards in a line of cash, some half-burnt and smoking from my dash through the fire. The wind carries the money right past Maria's face, and I watch as her gaze follows every single bill, her expression unmistakably stricken. When the last bit of cash floats past her face, her head turns, very slowly, until her eyes rest on me: panting and terrified, poised to bolt with Second's arms locked around me like a lover's.

The money flutters down through the sky like snowflakes.

Maria's eyes slowly move from mine to Second's.


	17. This Palace of Dim Night

**This Palace of Dim Night**

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**(Edward)**

Carlisle believes in fate and a higher power — in things that are meant to happen, and paths that are meant to be crossed. It is this belief with which he explains the unexplainable: the sickness of a young patient, the loss of an unborn child, the rape and near-murder of a bride-to-be. To him, these terrible things were meant to happen, arranged in perfect order to teach us the intricacies of compassion, love, and forgiveness. Carlisle's faith is solid and unwavering, but a mystery to me, a glitch in his otherwise logical existence. And more often than not, I discard his sentiments as nothing more than wishful thinking. But there are times, such as now, when I wonder.

Amidst the filmy smoke and orange-lit ashes, scattered foreign thoughts flicker like a slideshow through my mind: Maria's calculation, Second's heartbreak, Alice's fear, Jasper's determination. And instead of rushing after Jasper like I intended to, instead of acting heroically as I had planned, I find myself veering off-course and backtracking through the landscape of flames, searching for someone else. His mind shines so brightly among the others that it calls to me like a beacon, farther away from Alice, from Jasper, and the from the battle I came to fight.

A normal, healthy mind is usual running several thoughts at once — background thoughts, overarching thoughts, and an assessment of the current surroundings. Rémy's damaged psyche, however, carries one thought and one thought alone: Colette. Every ounce of mental energy is focused on her, narrowing in like liquid poured down a funnel. Her name rings out over and over, swinging back and forth in the empty space of grief until the sound becomes so loud, so all-consuming, I somehow become a part of it. His ache is my ache. His loss is my loss.

Carlisle too, spoke of suicide once, of the struggle to end his own immortal life. There aren't many options for our kind — the method of murder seems to be our only choice. Jasper, who had burned a thousand newborns for Maria, knew all too well how easily that method worked. But there are times when not even provoking an enemy will serve, as evidenced now by Rémy's suffering. He wants to die — it isn't even a thought for him, but more an empirical fact. There is no life for him without Colette. But who would kill a man out of mercy? Who would be willing to act as the noose and the shotgun, the laudanum that stopped the heart?

Who could know, truly know, that it would be suicide out of compassion, and not murder, in the end?

I find Rémy slumped against a pile of rocks, still mud-streaked and wet from the puddle that he had dragged himself through to get there. And although I had already seen him through Alice's sympathetic eyes, his anguished appearance still startles me. His filthy clothing is burnt to black, and his slouching, defeated posture makes pity swell up in my chest unlike anything I have ever felt before. Maria has shredded the skin of his face, arms, and midsection with her claws, leaving behind deep, angry gouges in his marble skin. But it is his eyes that speak the loudest — deep, echoing wells of emptiness. When he gaze focuses on me, it feels as though I have tripped forward and fallen headfirst into grief.

"Are you him?" he croaks, staring up at me. "'Ze mate she was kidnapped from?"

I think of Jasper flying through the burning woods, driven by his love for Alice. "No," I answer Rémy gently, and crouch down until I am eye-level with his pained face. "Jasper has gone to save her. I came here to save you."

Every bit of interest in me vanishes, and he turns away. "I do not wish to be saved. I no longer wish to live."

"I know."

Rémy head angles back to me slowly, and when his eyes meet mine I can hear in his thoughts that he understands. He knows now that I have come to end his life, not protect it — that the word _'save'_ can carry a thousand different definitions. His eyes blink very fast. "You... you would...?"

I press my lips together, wondering if I am meant to spend my whole existence blaspheming Carlisle's God. I, who once played judge and jury hunting those who had raped and killed, now step in to end a man's life out of pity. My sins are wrapped in good intentions, but they are sins nonetheless, and in the end (if there was an end) the great tabulation of them would damn me beyond reprieve. Would Carlisle approve of this? Would his exceptional compassion hold out even here, in the act of staining his hands with someone else's blood? I can't say. I can't say, and out of fear of his disappointment, I will probably never ask.

Unlike the rest of my family, I have the luxury of keeping a secret to myself.

"Yes," I say after a moment. "I will."

Rémy lets out a long breath and briefly closes his eyes. "You are a merciful to offer such a gift. Many 'ave not understood. My coven, 'zey refused me out of love, and Aro himself said the Volturi could not bear to waste such a talent as mine." He turns away from me again, and picks at the hot little pebbles beneath his fingertips. "You must know then, what it is to lose someone."

My first, instant, automatic thought is "_I wish_," and I am ashamed at how terrible and backwards this sounds, even in the privacy of my own mind. Loneliness crawls into my chest again and writhes there, that same old feeling of disconnected hopelessness. Maybe I would always be alone. Maybe I was searching for something—for som_eone _who didn't even exist. But even if she was out there, waiting for me, would I want really want this? Would I want to be Rémy in this moment, begging a stranger to end my life? Embarrassed with myself, I look down at my hands. Yes. I would. For even a just a taste of love, I would pay this price.

"I have never been in love," I tell him honestly, "and I have never lost anyone dear to me. It is not empathy but sympathy on my part. I can see how much you are suffering, and only want to help."

Rémy blinks fast again, and wraps his arms around himself, cold even in the blaze of flames closing in on us. "Do you believe in forgiveness? In 'ze mercy of God?"

I know what Carlisle would want me to say — I know that if he were here now, he would reach out with his infamous compassion and say that there is always hope, that Colette may be in Heaven even now, waiting; a reward for good behavior and selfless deeds. But I do not believe in these things enough to say them convincingly, and this broken man is beyond the comfort of lies. So instead, I stand, and simply offer him my hand. "I believe there are many things we do not know. But in the face of pain such as this, how could you ever fear hell?"

Rémy slowly takes my hand, and rises to his feet. "I 'ave nothing. I cannot live in a world where she does not exist."

His bottomless gaze finds mine again, and a jolt of precognition passes through me — some paranormal channeling of both Alice's and Jasper's talents. I knew this future. I felt this emotion. Where or how, I don't know, but the knowledge courses through every part of me, all encapsulated in pair of deep brown eyes I have never seen or known. And maybe there _is_ no way to explain the unexplainable in this, except to say at least a fragment of my soul must still believe in fate and higher power too — in things that are meant to happen, and in paths that are meant to be crossed. Trembling, I place one hand on Rémy's shoulder, and one head on his neck, and prepare to pry them apart.

"_Merci de toutes vos bontés__,_" he says softly, his last gentle words. "May you never 'ave need for such mercy."

***

For a moment, I am outside myself, too shocked to speak. I only stand there, the money fluttering around me through a smoky haze, transfixed at the way the edges of the paper glimmer with orange and curl inwards. Something that once had value is now worthless, nothing, ashes, dust, dirt. Like feelings, and like promises, money is an insubstantial thing. How else could it burn so readily, disappear so quickly? I watch it all disintegrate to ash, and realize in cold resignation that nothing is sacred and nothing is safe. Anything in life can burn like this. Anything can be taken away.

On the other side of a veil of smoke, Second and Jasper's mate are staring at me as if they expect me to do something outrageous and grotesque — split my head open to reveal a gargoyle-winged horror, spew a mouthful of snakes on the hot ground with a splatter.

"I see," I say simply, and don't move.

I remember a story that Nettie (or was it Lucy?) once told me, about a young couple who couldn't marry because she was white and he was black, and her daddy had sworn up and down he'd kill the both of them if he ever caught them together. They got it into their heads to run away together instead, robbed the general store blind, and took off for Atlanta in the middle of the night. When her daddy caught up with them 10 miles out of town, he shot his own daughter in the back and hung them both up from the nearest tree. He said only cowards and whores ran off in the middle of the night, and couldn't call himself a man if he let either of them walk away free.

It always seemed a foolish plan to me — to steal money and run away together like that. If I had been that girl's father, they wouldn't have even made it out of town.

Foolish indeed, but I can clearly see that this is Second's idea, not the pixie's. Likely she agreed to it as a means for survival, sensing that out of the two of us, she was better off with Second. But the money — that had to have been stolen long before we set foot in Calgary. Second had been planning this escape for awhile, since before Jasper's mate even entered the picture. She was just an afterthought, I suppose. A slap in the face to distract me from the knife wound in my back. It must have been delicious for him, and for her too: the beautiful, sensuous Maria, exchanged once more for a yellow-eyed tramp who didn't even have the guts to kill humans.

I laugh, a horrible ringing sound that chills them both.

Second releases his captive at once and holds up his hands the way a cavalryman would soothe a gun-spooked horse. "Maria—" he begins warningly.

"Save it," I snarl, before turning to Jasper's mate. Her yellow eyes widen when I smile at her in genuine camaraderie. "You know, I'm impressed, Princess. I underestimated you, and that isn't something that happens very often. I thought, looking at you, that Jasper couldn't possibly have picked a woman more opposite from everything that I stood for. But you aren't so very different after all, are you? Beneath that fragile veneer of purity, you were cast from the same mold of greed and ambition that I was." I laugh wryly when she opens her mouth to argue. "—No, no, lovely. Own up to it. Claim it. I'd have more respect for you if you did."

I expect anger in response to this, but instead she only looks at me with quiet pity. "I am nothing like you, Maria."

I smile again. It's all funny now. All a joke. Lines from a matinee. "Not so! If I were in your place I would have done the same. Stealing the former love of my enemy wouldn't have been enough for me either. I would want both the old _and_ the new, so that no matter where she looked, past present or future, she would always be alone."

"You're wrong," she argues steadily, and a fierce look burns in her eyes. "Jasper was never yours. Never, Maria. I didn't steal him, I _loved_ him. I loved him the way he deserved to be loved by you all along. Jasper is more than just a mercenary killer you made him to be, and more than just some second in command. Can't you see how special he is? I didn't steal anyone. I just loved the man you never even bothered to see." Her voice breaks, and she glances east, where a wall of fire curls up and lights the sky in sunset red-orange.

"I love him," she says again, like I hadn't heard her the first million times. "I love him and I just want to find him and go _home_. I don't care about enemies, or revenge, or ambition, or anything. I just want to go home."

I manage to hold my ground with flinching, but everything about this scene: her soft, steady voice, her open declaration of love, her pitying gaze... it all makes me want to burst into terrible, keening, childlike sobs.

In some stifled, timid part of me, I yearn for this woman's life. Her genuine, uncomplicated existence. She has no territory, and no status, no slaves, servants, or soldiers to do her bidding. She doesn't know what it's like to win or war, and has never felt the power of watching her enemies cower in terror at the sight of an approaching army. Even if she won all of the deep South and Mexico, she wouldn't know what to do with it. And yet... She loves and is loved by a man who has run halfway across the country and straight into a wildfire to find her. Fierce, determined Jasper, who had never given up on any battle that I could recall, and never backed down from any sort of fight, but who literally couldn't bear to spend another moment in my presence that night he left me on the dance floor.

Because I'm trembling all over and don't know how to hide it, I laugh again. "And Second?" I chance a glance at him. "I suppose he was just another one of my victims who you _loved_."

She glances sideways at Second, but his eyes are locked on my face, his gaze intently searching for mine. "It's true that I pity Second," she admits. "I know what it means to love someone and not be able to reach them. But I feel nothing further for him than that."

Fury strikes back up in me again, and I whip my head around to glare. I need someone to hurt the way that I've been hurt. I want someone to feel this cut as deeply as I do. "Pity, hmm. And yet, you're so willing to run away with him. Where to, I wonder? How far could my $750,000 get you? A cabin in Nova Scotia perhaps? You could fish instead of hunt there, and drain two dozen mackerel a night without anyone ever noticing. What a life! What glory! And all the while, Jasper, who you supposedly _love_ so much— what? Just waits around for you to come home? Continues to life off marmots with your weak-minded coven?"

Alice looks confused and even a little insulted, but Second literally throws himself in front of her and makes a slashing motion with his hand at me. "That's _enough_. I've heard enough. Wake the hell up, Maria." He snaps his fingers twice in my face. "I'm not running away with _Alice_. Why in God's name would I?"

"To be honest, my dear, I'm not entirely clear on your motivations at this point. Your behavior as of late has been disappointing to say the least." I keep my voice rock-steady and indifferent, and talk to him the way I'd talk to a newborn who cowardly hid during battle or killed one of his fellows over nothing more than a piece of human trash. I study my nails and wipe a smudge of ash from my middle finger. My stomach quivers with contained emotion. "You must have been planning this a long while, _mi vida_. Far before Actaeon even found our sly diminutive target."

Second stares at me evenly. "I've been planning it ever since you sold me out to the Volturi."

"Ah."

There's no use in trying to explain myself. We both know it. When caught in the crossfire with nowhere to run, I had offered up Second as easily as a handful of coins dug out from the bottom of a handbag. If the Volturi hadn't caught me in the act, I would have let him take the fall for all of New Orleans. And even though I know I could rectify all of it — this entire betrayal — with one single word, I know I never will. Fundamental pride won't allow me to explain now cornered and afraid I felt on that rooftop, or how weak. And won't let me say "I'm sorry" either. No matter how much regret I might feel. Second watches the emotions as they flicker across my face.

"I loved you, you know," he spits out, driving the knife in deeper. "Yeah, _love_, that four letter word you're so damn afraid of. The very same. Hell, I still love you. I love you the way Alice loves Jasper. Not despite your flaws, but _because_ of them, because you are every bit as broken and dishonorable as I am. And even though I don't want this— any of this— I don't give a damn about Monterrey or Texas or any other place on the map you want to burn alive and claim— I was still willing to stand by your side. I _loved_ you."

I clench my jaw tight to keep myself from speaking, and stare at him with cold, belligerent, indifference. I lift one shoulder up into a shrug. If I had a heart, it would have shattered.

My reaction hits Second like a punch in the face. "Do you even know my name?" he demands, his eyes bright. "Do you?"

I bite the inside of my lip. "Darling—"

Second's mouth twists with emotion. "Darling, my dear, mi vida, mi amore, love, lover, Second... You have a whole list of words up there to name me what you want. But you don't know it, not really. Do you," he says, not a question this time, but an accusation. When I remain silent, he laughs bitterly, and swipes a hand beneath his eyes. "That's what I thought."

He spins around on his heel.

"Don't you walk away from me," I hiss, my hands curling into fists.

He looks down at his feet for a moment, and shakes his head once. He keeps walking.

"That isn't a request, Second, it's a command," I yell out, stalking after him, too out of my mind to even care that Alice is watching, and that Jasper could be here any minute. My legs feel like rubber. I'm trembling so hard that my teeth are chattering. I heave in a ragged breath. "Are you listening to me?" I scream. "I gave you an order!"

But Second keeps walking, heading away from the spreading fire, leaving me backlit against the world of fire, with fluttering bits of paper and ash strewing up in his every footstep. It feels just like that night in the Monterrey mansion, when Jasper turned and left me in the middle of the dance floor. The wall of fire behind me could the grand marble staircase, and the sound of flames and falling trees is rhythmic enough to be the sycophantic chatter a dozen surrounding dancers. It could Jasper walking away from me now, walking away forever, his back in a straight line of unflinching resignation as he disappears into the smoke. Except this is worse. A thousand, aching, torturous times worse.

Because I never loved Jasper. Not the way I love Second.

The hem of my dress snags on burning branch, and I nearly tear it off in my attempt to get to him, tripping over my own feet. But he keeps walking, and eventually I stumble to a halt, too weak to take another step. I collapse to my knees in a pile of ashes. "If you try to walk away from me— if you leave me here— if you leave me— Stop! I said stop, goddamn it. I saved you— I stayed with you— I saved you when I could have looked the other way— I could have walked away and left you there, I could have let you jump off that bridge. But I didn't. I saved you, for _me_, you aren't _allowed_ to leave. You can't," I scream out, my voice cracking. "You _can't_."

Second doesn't turn back. "Watch me."

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**A/N: **The chapter title is a line from Romeo and Juliet, Act V, Scene III. I've been plotting that Edward and Rémy thing for a long while now. The New Moon parallels were just too delicious to pass up. And for those of you who are completely freaked out by Maria's vulnerability right now, don't expect it to last.

Next chapter: VAMP FIGHT II

(And Jasper!)


	18. Ashes

**Ashes**

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For just one moment, when Maria falls to her knees, I get a glimpse of her true self — the one she hides behind all the glitter and rage.

Even with her back to me, and only her posture to read, I can sense her brokenness. Something that had been pulled tight and tense for ages has finally loosened and torn, and the shreds of it are visible there in the way she clutches at her chest, the way her shoulders curve inwards on defeat. The sound of her pleading is almost shameful, like she is standing naked before me, baring herself in all its open ugliness, a shell split apart to reveal the slithering mess inside. Because even in her agony, even in utter despair, her natural malevolence reveals itself. Maria is not a woman who can be redeemed. There's too much spite, too much hate, too many barbs fences protecting her cold, shriveled, dead-in-the-ashes heart. If there _is_ forgiveness, if there _is_ mercy, she doesn't want it.

"Go on and leave then," she growls, finally lifting her head. "Prove yourself as useless as I always thought you were. A lifeless coward. A man who so scared to _live_ that he tries to throw himself off a bridge. You cried that night, you know. Did I tell you that? You blubbered on and on like a child. About your _wife_ and her _fever_. Well, you couldn't save her and you can't save Alice either. You won't even stay to try, will you? You'll let her burn in hell just like you did with your _wife_. Because that's the kind of man you are. A fucking coward."

Second, who I can tell remembers none of this, claps a hand over the gold wristwatch he wears. And I wonder, just as he must be wondering, if Maria is telling the truth. If, at some point in his human life, Second had loved and lost. I look on in cold foreboding as he struggles against the urge to turn around and go back to Maria for answers. The desire to know who he was before this dark world of blood and wars rises up within him like a storm — so powerful that the sky actually cracks open in response and rain patters and sizzles against the burning ground. But he is tired, far too tired, of allowing Maria to tell him who and what he is.

"If that's the truth," he says quietly, not looking at her, "then you won't miss me much, will you? You should be glad to be rid of me. If that's the truth, then I wish you had just left me there in the first place. Let me jump." Rain pools over his shoulders, slicking his hair down in a dark river over his ears. He steps through the puddles and the smoke, looking more like a ghost than a man, and keeps walking away from her.

"I'll kill her!" Maria blurts out suddenly, in a hideous, unrecognizable voice. "I swear I will! And I'll do it now, right now, while you still have to listen to her die!" She staggers to her feet, dragging the tattered remains of her dress around in a swishing motion, and stalks back, her eyes on me but her mind completely on Second. Her lips are mashed together with the effort of containing her emotion; she swipes a wet hand across her face and smears ash and moisture over her cheek like a bruise. "If you leave me, I'll kill her, I swear I will, and you know I can! I could kill her in an instant. She's not half the fighter that I am."

Second finally whirls around, and his eyes two glittering points of malice, two burning hot coals shoved into his skull. "And you're not half the _woman_ that she is."

Maria halts and blinks several times, her eyelashes wet with rain, but despite the angry trembling of her lips, she doesn't turn back to look at him. Instead, she focuses on me again, and this time her eyes actually see me standing there, casually alert with my body turned slightly to the side in readiness. She smiles wryly, and the radiant sight of her white teeth might have seemed beautiful if I hadn't already seen the true, dreadful reflection lurking behind all the beauty. "Well, I guess I'll have to cut her down to size then, won't I?"

The last two words are said through the clenched teeth of her brittle smile, and she rushes at me with so much force that the fallen leaves and ashes scatter behind her in a wave. I dodge, but she spins in mid-air and grabs me by the arm, wrenching it backwards until it nearly splits from the seam of my shoulder. I follow the motion and let it propel me around until I whip to the other side of her, my hand already outstretched. I rake my much-shorter nails over her face, and she hisses in pain and fury when I break skin and mar her cheek.

For a moment she just stands there, holding the shredded pieces of her skin, her face a grotesque mask of fury.

I know well enough to run, and I do, slipping a bit on the wet ashes beneath my feet. In the film of smoke before me, I see a flickering vision distorted by the flames: Jasper's determined face as he leaps over a burning log, embers flying up around him like a nest of fireflies.

Maria snags me from behind and spins me around so that she's facing me again. Before I can even try to escape, she darts forward with her mouth open. With a god-awful, animalistic snarl, she sinks her teeth into my exposed shoulder, latching onto me with curling, hook-like fingers. The burn from the venom stings enough to make me tremble and cry out, and I throw myself to the ground and into a roll in order to get her off me. She holds on, her teeth digging in deeper, until I hit a bed of jagged rocks hard enough to shake teeth loose. I jerk my elbow up immediately, and her head snaps backwards on her neck with a terrible crack.

The vision pulls at the edges of my mind again — Jasper again, running, roaring out my name. He is close, close enough to hear the high, ringing sound of Maria's laughter when she tosses me to the ground and pins me.

As strengthened by adrenaline as I am, I still cannot keep up with her — this woman who has fought and murdered all her life. Every hit, every scratch, every bite, is perfectly aimed with intent to kill, lacking even a hint of self-sufficiency. She will murder me or die trying, and this undaunted recklessness — her disregard for not only my life but her own, makes her completely unbeatable.

Distantly, I hear the sound of my name.

Everything spins in a rush of teeth and razor sharp nails — and the image of Maria's eyes above me, red like blood, infused with all the jealousy and ambition ignited within her. I struggle, choking on a mouthful of smoke, and inhale sharply when I feel her fingernails pierce through the hollow skin below my jaw, tension ripping sideways as she smears the side of my face against the dirty ground. When her breathing quickens and her pupils dilate in with the dark thrill of murder, I scream out and fight against her with all my strength, knowing that she is about to rip my head off.

But she doesn't, she never gets a chance, because suddenly Jasper is there.

Maria halts immediately, like a gazelle caught in the scorching hot gaze of a lion. My eyes hit Jasper's old scuffed, mud-caked boots first, and travel upwards until I can see his face — blatant, terrifying, nearly demonic hostility. Maria's fingernails dig harder into my throat for one trembling moment before her hand is ripped away and the pressure on my ribs lets up with instant, startling relief. Jasper shakes Maria back by the hair — a handful of wet, singed curls in his fist, and lifts her two feet off the ground, pulling so hard I can hear her scalp tear. He yanks her to the side, arches back for an instant, and then with vicious, startling force, he hurls her toward the burning woods, roaring out a sound that makes the back of my neck go chill with terror.

Maria's body flings through the air like a throwing star, and she slices through five blackened trees before slamming into a burning oak with enough force to crumble the fiery trunk to dust. I stumble to my feet and cover my face when the blast of burning splinters and hot wood chunks pelts against my skin. Jasper's arms, still in motion from the throw, whip around and fall to his sides, his fists still tightly clenched with adrenaline. His chest heaves once, a deep ragged breath of explosive rage, and I can feel something terrible and black seeping from him, something he's fighting desperately to control.

I had seen enough revenge and violence in the past few days to expect him to dart forward and chase after Maria's motionless form — to follow up this brutal move with the terrible act of murder.

Instead, he turns back to look at me. His chest heaves again, and I can read his decision just as clearly as if it had been torn from the pages of one of his favorite novels: the hero who chooses love over revenge.

I reach out my hand for him, aching for his touch, and his eyes clear as the insidious blackness fades. He takes one step, then another.

And with an expression so gentle, so tender that it hurts, he folds me into his arms.

***

One night, when Alice and I were still living in Middlebury, a forest fire in the nearby Adirondacks had lit the autumn sunset on fire with an impossibly red glow. Together, we watched the sun sink from the highest branches of a sugar maple, silent with awe as everything around us turned an iridescent orange in the pervading light — our skin, our eyes, the very air passing in and out through our lips. While I looked on in secret, aching love, Alice had walked like a dancer step over step to the very end of the thickest branch. With perfect, graceful, balance, she had held her arms aloft until it looked as if she were trying to embrace the sky itself. _"It's so beautiful that I don't just want to watch, Jazz,"_ she had said, _"I want to be a part of it."_

This first moment with Alice in my arms again is like that — trying to hold a thing that can't be held, a vain attempt to contain the uncontainable.

The love shimmering from Alice is pure gold, pure joy, a wild sort of brilliancy that seems to carry with it the trappings of every good thing I have never known. And when my own emotion surfaces from the depths of my wounded soul, I might as well have been clinging to a sunset for all that I could capture of it; it was a phenomenon far beyond my talent. All else, Maria, Second, the pain of being apart, the fear of not knowing... it all disappears the instant Alice rests her head against my chest. The warm, golden light between us fills all the dark spaces left behind, shining out like the first too-bright gleam of the sun leaping above the horizon.

I can't speak, and neither can she, and neither can anyone else for that matter, because the emotion spilling out of me, multiplied to outrageous heights by my talent, is rippling through the fiery woods like fine, invisible strands of golden thread, wrapping around everything and everyone who has a heart to feel. Out of the corner of my eye, still enveloped in my ethereal world of light with Alice, I watch as both Maria and Second freeze, each of them holding a hand over their heart as if they could physically feel it thumping beneath their palms.

Even Edward, appearing to the right of us through the curtain of smoke, catches his breath and stumbles forward as if he'd been physically hit on the back of the head. I almost smile. _What you feel now is just a fraction of it,_ I tell him silently, _just the tiniest, most insignificant fraction. You can talk about right and wrong all you like, but until you feel this— until you feel love in its full glory, you have no idea the lengths a man would go to keep it safe._

Edward pulls himself together with a shake, and smiles at me over Alice's shoulder. He laughs. "You'd better keep a watch on that talent of yours, Jasper. You do that around the house, and Emmett and Rosalie will maul each other until the very foundation crumbles."

Alice turns her face up to me, but her expression holds none of Edward's humor. Her aura disappears and comes back again quickly, signaling one of her snapshot visions. "Jazz—" she begins, and when I glance across the clearing and meet Maria's eyes, I know everything that's about to happen, just as clearly as Alice had seen it.

Maria and Second, drawn closer together by the effects of my talent, are now studiously ignoring each other, facing away like bookends. Maria looks terrible, worse than I have ever seen her; her dress is torn and burnt, and the skin of her cheek is hanging in loose white strips. Her hair is in wet, burned chunks around her shoulders. "I suppose you'll kill me now," she says flatly. "Out of vengeance, or anger. Or perhaps just because your little pet will demand it of you." She glances surreptitiously at Alice, who would never dream of demanding anyone's death.

Maria shrugs a little, and the strap of her dress slips down over her dirty shoulder. "Well, that's just fine. It's only right, isn't it?" She gives me a ghost of a smile. "I would expect nothing less from you. I raised you as my soldier. I taught you how to fight, how to kill, how to destroy. I taught you everything you know about death and ambition. It seems fitting somehow, fateful, that you would now turn all of those lessons against me."

Second turns his head toward her slightly, but says nothing, and eventually looks away.

"Do it the way I taught you then, Jasper," she continues with a challenging squint. "Make it painful enough that I can carry the memory of it with me into hell. Make me understand how disappointed you are." And she smiles at me brilliantly, fearless, a smile I remember like ghastly nightmare that strikes up against you during the safety of the day. _"Just kill them all this time, dearest," _she had told me more than once, handing me back a death-list full of names. _"There's no hope for any of them. And make it painful, so they know how disappointed I am."_

I am silent for a long time, holding Alice's hand tightly in my own, facing down the demons of my past. Then finally, I speak. "You taught me everything I know about death, Maria. But you taught me nothing about life. My family did that."

At my side, both Alice and Edward turn to me with mirrored expressions of surprise and pride. I am surprised myself — surprised at how good this feels, and how right. "I'm not going to kill you. I should. But I won't. I've learned to be a better man than that."

It isn't enough to say that Alice is proud of me now. The emotion I feel radiating from her is much more than pride; pride, and love, and peace, all mixed together. For the first time perhaps, she sees without question how her undeterred goodness has effected me.

Maria just laughs once, humorlessly, and throws her hands up as if nothing in the world makes sense. I no longer feel any threat from her. The past is dead and over with.

We are nearly out of sight before Second speaks up. "Wait." I turn back to look at him over my shoulder, and watch his eyes blink rapidly with the effort of holding back emotion. "Take me with you," he says abruptly.

Maria makes a low hissing noise, and her face becomes a battlefield of anger and hurt.

Alice turns back too, and stares at Second curiously. "You want to come with us?"

Second ignores her and appeals only to me, his eyes focused intently on my face with the desperate look of a starving orphan. He knows without asking that it is my permission he needs; that no matter how much compassion Alice might have for him, it is my word and my word alone that will allow him to stay with us. "I don't know what life is without Maria," he says, and I can feel something raw and painful rising to the surface of his aura, something he wants to bury. "But like you said, I don't know what life is _with_ her, either. Take me with you."

"Our family does not approve of your diet, and we cannot afford to make exceptions," Edward says flatly, reading Second's mind. "You cannot stay with us if you intend to keep feeding on humans."

Second's blood-red eyes dart from Edward to me and back again, before his gaze finally settles on Alice. Her delicate profile tilts up to him a bit, and I can feel her sympathy just as clearly as if it were my own. If anyone knows what it is to desire a home and a family, it's Alice. Second couldn't know this of course, but maybe somehow in the pitter-patter of rain and steam all around us, he senses that she is the only shot he has left. The only life he has other than the one he led with Maria. He swallows once, his throat working visibly. "Alice. Alice, please. Talk to him. Tell him. Tell him how what happened to me. I know... I know I can't change overnight. But if Jasper can do it— if he can get away from Maria and have a better life in her absence, then I can too. I can walk away just like he did. I can leave, and I can live. I want to."

He is so busy pleading that he doesn't notice Maria slink back into the shadows.

I have felt this emotion from her before — this strange mix of fear, betrayal, and murder. I felt it with Nettie and Lucy before they had turned on Maria, and I felt it from Maria herself when she had finally grown tired of my lack of zest for her ambition. I know exactly what she's planning the moment she disappears behind Second. A moment later, so does Alice, who leans forward and breaths out a horrified, "No!"

There is no time. Alice's warning is already too late. With a silent rush of air and eyes blackened with malice, Maria comes up behind Second.

He meets my eyes last, and it is like looking into a cracked mirror, an alternate reality. In him I see myself: my past and the future that never was; who I would have been if I hadn't left Maria on the dance floor that night in Monterrey.

The connection breaks, and the last of the raindrops fall, helplessly consumed by the fire.

Maria brushes her lips against the back of Second's neck like a kiss, but her mouth comes away with a strip of white flesh. Her nails claw into the wound with a slashing motion, and Second's head lolls forward and drops off his shoulders, hitting the ground with a sick thud. Edward and Alice both turn away, but I, who have seen such horrors before, don't even bother to flinch. Second's still-standing body wavers for half an instant before slumping over and crashing to the ash-strewn forest floor, his hands blindly searching for something— anything— to save him. His glinting, almond-shaped eyes are still open and pleading when Maria gingerly picks the head up, cradles it under her arm, and, without so much as a drip of emotion, tips it into the fire.

Alice buries her face against my chest with a muffled cry, and I watch unblinking as Maria begins the methodical disassembling of limbs.

This act of is as practiced and automatic as the recitation Catholic prayers, a blank-minded repetition that begins to sound like gibberish after the first repeat, and loses meaning entirely before the end. Each slash follows another, piece by shining marble piece, until the very base of morality disintegrates. Maria is calm, blank, and completely void of feeling until she touches Second's hand — and the gold wristwatch dangling unlatched from his slippery skin. It flashes in the firelight when she peels it away from him, and she turns it in her palm once to look at the back. Whatever she sees there, inscribed in the tarnished gold, is enough to make her freeze.

I cast a glance at Edward, and find him briefly closing his eyes — the silent cringe that hearing about some terrible tragedy evokes.

Over the years I have felt many things from Maria; she lives out of an aura of explosive emotion and tireless energy, as changing as the curls of fire. But I have never felt these emotions from her, never not once, in all her varying moods and feelings. Remorse. Regret. Guilt. This quiet aura is so unlike her that I am suspicious of it at first, and wonder if maybe she has found a way around my talent. But when I see her tremble, just once, and hold the wristwatch to her chest, I know that it's real. Her eyes stare out at the flames, and her body goes very still, more like a statue than the sparkling creature of ambition and fire that I know.

When the smoke from Second's body rises up around her, and the fire begins to leap forward, spitting out mean sparks and bursts of flames, Maria continues to just stand there, clenching that fistful of gold like a rosary.

"Maria," I say quietly.

"Just go."

Defeat. Apathy. Terrible, swallowing, black-as-pitch depression. Alice and Edward both turn to me in question. But I have never felt these things from Maria before, and I'm not sure what to do or say. I shift from one foot to the other, conscious of Alice's light little hand in my own. "The trial," I finally manage to say, for no other reason than I can't believe that Maria would give up what she wants so easily — that she would allow all of her scheming calculations to crumble to dust. My eyebrows draw together in awed confusion. "The Volturi."

"Just go," she repeats.

Edward gives me a slight nod of confirmation, and for a moment, the good man in me feels sorry for her, this pathetic creature who stands motionless as her the hem of her dress catches fire: Maria has given up. There is no fight left in her now. Even after all that she has done and all that she has made me do, I realize now that I will never be able to kill this woman, not even out of revenge. Alice is safe, and somehow this simple fact manages to encompass all that matters to me. We are free to go home now, home to our family, and we will continue to live our lives with love, laughter, and depth. And Maria, whose grasping ambition could have driven her to raze the whole world, will never have any of these things. Though a darker part of me resents my own inaction, I find her meaningless existence pitiable.

I nod back at Edward, and we silently turn to leave.

But Alice stays put, and slips her hand out of mine. Her beautiful face has such a look of determined kindness that I am reminded of the way she used to look at me in the beginning — as if she could draw the good man out of hiding with nothing more than the gentle touch of her hand. Instead of being repulsed or afraid of the waves of terrible emotion rolling off Maria — the strange and otherworldly darkness of grief, Alice steps forward until she is standing at Maria's side. Silently, but with enough emotion to convey a thousand heartfelt words, she reaches out and places her hand on Maria's shoulder. And at this compassionate touch, Maria's statue stillness breaks apart and falls, brittle and jagged, to the bottom of the deep, dark pit of her aura.

Life comes back into her eyes, however pained, and though she doesn't physically acknowledge Alice's presence, I can feel the swell of shame as she turns her face away, and something that feels remarkably like… gratefulness.

Alice returns to me looking exhausted, and I fold my arm around her slim shoulders. Love and pride overwhelm me, tighten my chest with emotion until it feels like it could burst. In all the world, there is no one like my Alice. There's no need for me to whisper that I will never leave her, to tell her that I have set aside that notion forever in the wake of tasting a life without her. She has already seen all my decisions. I can feel it in the way she leans into me with complete and utter peace, a woman secure in the arms of absolute love. Instead, I press my lips against her temple, and turn to walk away from this —from my past, and from the man I used to be— forever. "Let's go home," I say steadily. "Let's go home to our family."

The three of us walk through the world of ashes, the fire at our back, in no hurry whatsoever. Time is nothing to us; those who have an eternity of happiness to look forward to. The future, what will happen tomorrow and the next day and the next, doesn't seem to matter much anymore, as long as we have each other. I had learned that somehow along the way, despite what I had been taught about life and survival in the beginning. With Carlisle and Esme waiting for us, and Rosalie and Emmett probably checking out the window every five minutes, it seems we might run all the way back. But there is a comfort in knowing that our home, our family, will always be there, no matter how long we take to find our way back.

I turn to look at Maria over my shoulder, just once, and watch her slide the gold band of the watch around her wrist to clasp it.

"_Goodbye,"_ I tell her silently — the farewell I never said to her before. _"I hope… I wish…"_ I look down, words failing me. _"Goodbye."_

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**A/N:** I know a lot of you were after Maria's blood, and would have been very satisfied to see her die. But I believe in redemption more than anything, and I wanted Jasper to come away from this a good man… not the killer Maria trained him to be

Only one more chapter to go. :)


	19. Alchemy

**Alchemy**

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I am reading in the woods alone, reclining with my back against an Alaskan larch, when Edward steps through the trees. He nods, and I nod, and he shoots one furtive glance over his shoulder before lightly jumping to one of the moss-covered branches above me. He settles down with one of his notebooks and a fountain pen, and I wonder, with only a small amount of annoyance, why in all the wide and echoing expanse of Alaska, he has chosen to come _here_ and invade my personal space. If it had only been one instance, I would have thought nothing of it, but Edward has been like my shadow ever since the three of us returned to our family. He is always there, it seems, lurking behind me with a strange mix of guilty emotions that I can't quite place.

But Edward is a man of secrets, unlike the rest of us, and though I can sense that my presence is calming to him, I don't understand why. "You've been awfully quiet the past few days," I say casually, trying to draw him out.

He makes a face. "Tanya."

I almost laugh. Bold, persistent Tanya had latched onto Edward the moment he arrived, and has been attempting to seduce him ever since, with a slow, determined inseparability that reminds me of a slug inching up a wall. _That's explainable_, I think, turning back to my book_. But the emotions radiating from you are not. I know you don't want your problems to be a burden on anyone, but having you follow me around like a magpie, collecting my feelings of peace and happiness like trinkets for your nest is just as bad. So tell me, and get it over with: what happened out there, with __Rémy__?_

He is quiet for a long time, then sighs, folding his notebook closed. "Do you believe in Carlisle's heaven?"

I consider this for a moment, but instead of the worn leather cover of Carlisle's bible and the straight lines of a cross, I think of Alice. I think of forgiveness, of seeing the best in someone, of unconditional, unchanging, overpowering love. "I believe in _something_," I say honestly. "Goodness, maybe. Redemption."

"Have you ever killed anyone out of mercy?"

I turn my head up to where Edward sits, perched above me with his notebook on his lap. For once, he looks very young, and I can feel the insecure fear leaking out of him just as vividly as the droplets of rain on my face. I look down again, brush the moisture from the page, and close my book against the spattering of rain.

"Maria usually turned men, not women," I say, remembering. "Peter's Charlotte was a rare exception, and there were a few others scattered here and there too. This one girl, she was maybe fifteen when Maria claimed her, and she was unnaturally sweet for our kind, a real little beauty. Maria couldn't take it. She was so cruel to that girl that it makes my stomach turn to think of it now. The kind of mental and physical tortures that no one could withstand, let alone a fifteen year old girl. She begged me for mercy, and so I snuck into the newborn holding area one night and killed her as gently as I could, put an end to it, and blamed it on inner-coven fighting the next morning."

I look up at Edward again, my expression stern. "There are many sins that I'm ashamed of, but that's not one of them."

He stares down at me with a hesitant smile, and after a moment, he nods. I can see in his eyes that he has more to say, but his expression changes slightly and his gaze moves toward the edge of the clearing. The warm scent of sunshine breezes through the air, and a very familiar aura of love and happiness seems to drown out my entire world with light. No matter how many times I feel her presence, the warmth of it is always a gift somehow, always something more than what I dared to hope for. Alice walks through the trees as gracefully as a doe, and shades her eyes from the rain to look at the two of us. A smile warms my face.

"Tanya's looking for you," she says merrily to Edward, before making her way over to me. She's wearing a new dress that makes her look like a sprig of lavender among the green, and I put down my book, longing to see if that shimmery fabric feels as soft as it looks.

Edward grimaces. "I know she's looking for me."

I take Alice's little hands and pull her into my lap. Both of us look up at Edward in humor. "I could charge up Tanya's lust a bit for you, if you want," I offer. "Really get her going." Alice laughs.

Edward narrows his eyes. "I see. Fine thanks I get for helping you two out with Maria." He leaps down from the branch with a light thump and brushes the bits of moss from his pants, but I can feel that he isn't as insulted as he looks. He is trying, in his moody Edward way, to give Alice and me some semblance of privacy. "I can take care of Tanya myself, thank you. Maybe someday, through careful and studious reiteration, she'll actually begin to understand the meaning of the word 'no'."

"Hmm, I wouldn't count on it," Alice says sagely. I smile into her hair.

Edward glares at her. "Thanks a lot, Alice. That's very helpful. I suppose I'll just resign myself to an eternity alone with the league of happy couples." He turns to leave, but looks at me backwards over his shoulder. He nods, once, and it is enough to convey the thanks he feels for my words about mercy. _You're welcome_, I think. But I wonder, as he disappears through the trees away from us, how many other secrets Edward is holding in his heart, beneath the layers of sarcasm and stormy aloofness. He's a complicated one, my brother, and somehow I get the feeling that his whims are capable of causing far more trouble than I ever have.

Alice picks my book up from the wet ferns and turns it in her hands to see the title. She glances at me with a raised eyebrow. "Nietzsche?"

I grin. "If I'm going to enroll at the university this fall, I need to be well-versed on the classics of philosophy."

"Between Dickens novels, you mean?" she teases, but I can feel her pride at my determination and courage. She always wanted me to go to school. The laughter drains from me as suddenly as it appeared, and I hold her closer to me, my Alice who believes in me the way no one else does and loves me the way no one else ever will. With her head resting against my silent heart, she can feel my desperation, and like many times over the past few days, she turns her amber eyes on me with compassion. "I'm here, Jazz," she says softly. " I'm not going anywhere."

I brush my thumb over her cheek and let it rest in the hollow below her ear. "Sometimes I think the humans have it easy," I say after a moment. "They run around in a constant state of stress over things like money, and jobs, and finding a date for Saturday night, and who said what to who... but it's all temporary, isn't it? One sting of pain mixed in with a heap blissful ignorance over a string of a few decades, and then it's done. Wherever they go afterwards, to Heaven like Carlisle says, or just into non-existence, it's over. They have no concept of the things we carry — the thoughts and memories and real, true horrors that can haunt us for an eternity."

"That's enough philosophy for you, Mister," Alice says, but I can see the love and understanding in her eyes as she kisses me gently on the lips.

"It was terrible being apart from you, that's all," I murmur against her. "Being apart, and not knowing. I'm going to carry that with me for a long time."

A voice floats out to us, musical and slightly raised: Esme calling us into a family meeting. Because I know Alice wants to be a part of things, and because I'm slowly learning that it's okay for me to be a part of them too, I stand up with her still in my arms, and set her gently on her feet. When I take her hand, she squeezes my palm once, and in her rain-streaked dress with droplets of moisture in her shining black hair, she has never looked more beautiful to me. 'Terrible' is actually a grotesque understatement for the blank-minded horror I felt when I was apart from her. Apart and helpless to do anything but watch from a distance as my love may or may not have been killed. No philosopher could even begin to extrapolate the intensity of such a nightmare.

"Me too," Alice says quietly. "Being apart, and not knowing… that was the worst."

"Except you _always_ know, don't you? My little seer." I smile down at her. "And what does the future hold for us?"

Her aura slips away for a moment, just a breath, and then she is back here with me, her eyes shining with soft emotion. "Happiness, certainly. There will be a lot of that over the years." Her gaze moves to where Edward had disappeared earlier. "And surprises, too. Surprises that come with hardships but somehow end up right in the end. There may be times when we feel pain or fear, but it's our suffering that makes these moments — these peaceful times, seem so special. The future holds a lot for us, Jazz. How can it not, when we're together?"

I watch her eyes flicker with some far away concern. "What is it?"

"I just wonder sometimes. About her, I mean," she says, and the image of Maria presses between us like a tenacious ghost. "I wonder."

I sigh. I wonder too, and I probably always will. Even for all that she has done to me, there is no one more pitiable and bent on self-sabotage than Maria. Whatever the future holds for her, I don't want to know; I can't imagine in any way shape or form that it will be a happy reflection of mine. Maria doesn't have the love of a good heart to guide her, nor the stability of a family. She has nothing, and it makes me sad — beyond sad, to realize that she never will. "Maria's like a cat, darlin'. She always lands on her feet. She may not learn the lessons she needs to learn, or come to the conclusions that she needs to, but she's a survivor. Whatever life there is left, she'll own it."

"You don't think she'll change, then?" Alice asks in a small voice. "Not even after everything that happened?"

I look south beyond the tree line, in the direction of Mexico and Monterrey — where Maria was either holding trial with the Volturi, running for her life, or somehow managing to do neither: unexpected, volatile Maria, effortlessly escaping accountability once more. "No," I say steadily, and I sigh again. I draw Alice closer to me, fitting her tight against my body, and letting go of the past for good. "But I wish her well, just the same."

'***'

At the top of the marble staircase, a grand, silent piece of sweeping, unnecessary architecture, I come to halt and stare.

It is night now, and stars shine through the glass atrium as watchful and expectant as a sky full of blinking white eyes. Cobwebs float from the unlit chandelier to each darkened corner, visible only when I turn my head; strands of sticky neglect that swing back and forth in the breeze from the open door. Moonlight slides across the dance floor below, casting strange-shaped shadows through the ornate silhouette of the chandelier — hooks and rings and long lines that reach all the way into the corners. Though it is empty and silent, this room rings with echoes of the past: sycophantic laughter and raised voices, the clink of fine crystal, the flutter of piano and dragging of strings.

I head down the stairs one at a time, and send a splash of gasoline sailing with each footstep. The liquid slides across the smooth steps and spills over the sides, hitting the ballroom floor with wet slaps that sound like gunshots.

At the bottom of the stairs, the silence closes in on me. I have never heard it this quiet before, without the voices and the music and the battle cries and the shouting. Now there is only the warm chirp of cicadas and the slow dripping of gasoline from the can in my hand. I spin around beneath the chandelier in one last waltz, my hands reaching out for the partner I no longer have. The click of my heels against the marble and the swishing sound of my skirt form a beat of their own, a new symphony of what it is to love, to lose, and to be alone.

I trail a line of gasoline behind me out the door and into the balmy summer night, where I soak the fiery clumps of azaleas and hedgerows, the long trails of ivy that run up the colonnades and Spanish arches. I toss the empty can to the cobblestone courtyard with a clatter, and pick up the new one waiting for me beside the wrought-iron gate. I follow the well-traveled trail to the woods beyond the mansion, to the ring of live oaks where I had the newborns burned at the turning of their first year. Here, there is no moonlight to guide me, only a swallowing darkness that pushes in on me from all sides. The star-eyes above brighten.

The last of the gasoline is tossed to the center of the ring, splashing on the fresh pieces of wood and kindling: the busted pieces of the solid oak bed from my room, the many dresses and silks I once draped myself in, the chaise lounge from the ballroom, the priceless pieces of antique furniture I once scattered around the mansion with pride, all interspersed with the personal bank papers and records of all the newborns that I had turned, used, and killed.

I twirl the matchbook in my hands once.

It is darkly thrilling, this moment: the point of no return. I savor it with a long inhalation of damp, heated air, the taste of gasoline stinging my lips like a kiss. Then I strike a match in the curve of my hand, and throw it. I walk around the outside and light another, and another, another, another, until the bonfire rises with a _whoosh_ of sound, glowing hot orange-red, spitting sparks and hissing as the furniture cracks and falls apart under the pressure. The heat prickles against my face, and I raise a hand to shield my eyes when the first of the oaks catches fire and sends down a rain of embers.

I step away from the wet line of gasoline leading back the mansion, and make my way to the hot grass beside the woods, on the edge of the hill that faces the entire vista of Monterrey. I stand there silently, unmoving, and watch as my life goes up in a blaze.

When the fire rushes past me in a long line toward the mansion, I glance down at the watch on my wrist. Sunrise is only minutes away. The starting of a new day. The starting of a new life. I wait until the sky begins to lighten with pink and violet, and then gently, as if it's made of spun-glass and not heavy gold, I slide the wristwatch off my hand. I hold it there for a moment, ticking in my palm like a pulse, and then turn it over. In the flickering firelight, the inscription leaps out at me again, burning into me in a way that the flames never, ever could:

_Gabriel, my only love. Through death and time, forever._

Not Second, but Gabriel. Not my only soldier, but my only love. Not never, but now, always, and forever — whatever forever means to those of our kind. The words are mine, and yet not mine, I am a part of them and yet I am a thousand lifetimes away. I trace over the carved letters with my fingertip once before pressing my lips together, and closing my hand around the heavy gold until I can feel it crack against the marble of my palm. I arch my arm back, take a deep breath, and send the watch whistling into the blaze. The gold spins, shining in the darkness, until it disappears somewhere in the heat and light, the world of smoke and flames. And I imagine, though I can't see, that those words are melting now, sliding down sideways to seep into the ashy ground, no longer a trinket worn around a wrist, but a part of the earth itself, infused with the very air I take in through my lungs — breath after ragged breath.

"Ma'am, are you alright?"

I whip around sharply, startled; I hadn't even noticed anyone approaching. The scent of gasoline and smoke hangs around me like a cage, too thick to notice the smell of a warm-blooded human riding up behind me — a young man on a hulking horse which stops and twitches nervously, both at both my presence and the dangerous heat of fire. The man's eyes widen when I turn my face up to him, and imagine what I must look like to him: ash-covered but resplendent, polished and reeking of guilt and grief. The horse stomps and snorts, and the man blinks once, and reigns the animal to a standstill. "I saw the fire from the hill— do you need me to into town for help?"

"No," I blurt out, more sharply than I intended. "Don't leave me." And in the crazed, grieving moment of panic that follows, I can't help but wonder who I'm shouting after: the man who left me in the middle of the dance floor, the man I murdered out of fear and love, or the man who slips down from his horse and stands before me now. "Stay with me," I say desperately. "Don't leave."

Like I'm a skittish horse myself, a wild thing that must be tamed, he holds up his hands and nods, approaching me on slow, silent feet. He is thickly muscled, but tall and well-proportioned, almost graceful in the way he moves. His hair is cut short around his ears, and day-old stubble grows over his jaw and around his mouth. His eyes are Spanish-black and direct, honest, staring at me with a gleam of suspicion mixed in all the awe. There is a rifle attached to his back, and he swings it off in a calm, familiar motion, setting it on the grass where it glimmers in the firelight.

"Are you a soldier?" I ask him.

"No ma'am. I'm a hunter."

"Are you any good?"

He cocks his eyebrow at the strangeness of my question, but nods with the quiet assurance of a man who knows himself well. "The best."

I pull my cold, trembling lips into a smile — a hard, brittle smile that makes me feel as though my face is cracking. "I'd like to see that." I glance once at crumbling mansion again when the second story windows burst apart in a rain of glass, fire churning inside like a hungry red-orange beast. The blaze is rising higher now, above the flat line of the roof, in perfect synchronization with the sun sliding over the eastern hills. _This is all I am_, I think numbly, my head fuzzy with smoke and the memory of a man I'd give anything to forget. _This is all I will ever be._ I laugh then, and toss back my hair, and no one will ever know what it cost me to turn away from it all, to burn it, to burn _him_ — Gabriel, my only love, with a casual, flirtatious extending of my hand. "Give me a ride then, my dear Hunter, and you can tell me all about your talents."

Red streaks across the sky like blood, and I walk across the ash-layered grass with that same awful smile fixed on my face; the one that says both everything and nothing. Mesmerized, he takes my icy fingers and wraps them in his big warm hand. _These are my soldiers,_ I think, staring at his weathered, unfamiliar face. _The men I raise and coax and favor, the men I promise a better life. They will have the riches of the world. They will have all the prey they desire. They will win a war for me, and after I whisper sweet nothings in their ears and dressed them up in finery, I will send them all to die with this same sparkling smile. _

"Where to?" he asks.

In all the wide world there is nothing left for me. Nothing but ambition. Hard things, glittering things: things of stone and blood and hatred. I am a creature newborn of the flames, a meaner darker woman than I ever was before. All the meager good in me has died here, melting into the earth with that wristwatch — a sort of reverse alchemy that turns gold into the base metal of iron, and the elixir of life into the far richer drink of death.

"It doesn't matter," I say, and I don't look back. "Anywhere. Everywhere. Before the end I'll own it all."

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**A/N: **I want to thank everyone for all the kind reviews, especially the people who have stuck with me since Law of Gravity. I wrote this last scene of Maria's before I wrote anything else, and I wrote it while listening to the song "A Clock is Ticking" by Snow Patrol. Give it a listen if you can; it's a haunting, beautiful song.

I have no future plans for stories, at least not in the fanfiction world, so there will be no sequels this time. The characters are where they are: Maria at her self-sabotaging best, and Jasper and Alice happily together with their family. I am content with that; I hope you are too.

Thank you again for reading along. It's been much more fun than I expected. You are all rockstar-readers. :)


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